His name is Jack Bauer, he's a federal agent. A federal agent, DAMMIT!

"Right now, terrorists are plotting to assassinate a presidential candidate. My wife and daughter have been targeted. And people I work with may be involved in both. I'm federal agent Jack Bauer — and today is the longest day of my life."

Hit US TV Series starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, agent for a fictional US government agency, during some very bad days. Each season of the series takes place in Real Time over the course of a 24-hour period (each episode is one hour out of that day), during which Jack is called into service to Race Against the Clock and stop a terrorist threat.

The first season revolved around an assassination plot on presidential candidate David Palmer. Jack's wife and daughter are kidnapped to make him assassinate Palmer on the terrorists' behalf; the only link the two of them have was a covert wetworks operation in Sarajevo, which turns out to be the motivation for the day's plots.

Each season since then has revolved around a large-scale terrorist threat to a major city, usually backed up by a Crazy-PreparedBig Bad, a well-thought-out Evil Plan, and, sometimes, a Diabolical Mastermind, typically revealed during a Wham Episode. So far, the threats have been nuclear bombs, a bio-weapon, a nerve agent, and more nuclear bombs, with some presidential assassinations along the way. All in a day's work, eh?

The series is shot in strict real time, and with commercial breaks included covers a full 24 hours. (Without them it's about 18.) It uses of a lot of Split Screen, never employs Slow Motion, and displays ticking digital clocks as book-ends to commercial breaks and at various times during each act; these factors contribute to the sense that events are moving at a breakneck pace. It follows not only the adventures of Jack and other field agents, but also political intrigue centering around the people who give Jack orders back at CTU, and sometimes the people who give them orders, such as the President of the United States; the sitting President has been a starring character in every season but the first, and even then Jack reported to the candidate who would be voted into office between Seasons 1 and 2. Finally, it isn't scared of Player Punches; Anyone Can Die, to an extent that was only equalled when Game of Thrones took to the airwaves.

The Hollywood Writers' Strike of 2007/8 kept the series off the air during 2008, with the exception of a two-hour Made-for-TV Movie, Redemption, which aired in November 2008 and acted as a Prequel for the seventh season. The seventh season was a Retool which moved the action to the East Coast and generally improved on the fairly mediocre Season 6. Season 8 allowed it to take the title of "Longest-Running spy Show" by episode count away from Mission: Impossible, which had held the title since 1973. It premiered on 17 January 2010 and moved the action again, this time to New York. It marked the end of the show's contiguous run.

The Movie, hinted at as early as Season 5, was scheduled to begin shooting in Spring 2012, but died at the hands of budgeting issues. Instead, it returned as a 12-episode mini-series called 24: Live Another Day (although the subtitle doesn't appear on screen), which took place in London and aired from May to July 2014. It involved the return of much of the central cast and crew.

In January 2016, the show was slated for another return. Fox ordered a pilot for a Sequel Series called 24: Legacy. It takes place in the same continuity as the original show and will feature at least one returning cast member. Sutherland is to return on the other side of the camera, as executive producer, but the showrunners have claimed that the character of Jack Bauer will not appear. Due to the show's history of major plot twists, fans are taking this with a grain of salt. Legacy premiered following the Super Bowl on February 5 2017, and finished its first season on April 17. But in June of the same year, Fox announced that it was also to be Legacy's only season, as they cancelled the show, though the channel would at the same time state that they were still looking into creating another incarnation of the series.

Anil Kapoor has driven forward an effort to create a Hindi-language remake of the show, also entitled 24 but called "24 (India)" here on the wiki to differentiate. Kapoor plays the main character, Jai Singh Rathod. The show airs on the Indian network Colors.

24 can be seen as a throwback to earlier works: a Dirty Harry for the War on Terror, or even a Republic Serial for the 21st century. It is also jokingly referred to as "the Jack Bauer Torture Hour", or "the Jack Bauer Power Hour". Try to guess why.

Sherry Palmer, for all her scheming, gets a moment of emotional vulnerability as she pleads with Julia to put the gun down, but then Julia shoots and kills her before killing herself.

Jonas Hodges. He cooperates with the authorities to prevent the world from finding out that he's alive, and yet in doing so, he is unable to see his family again. And then he gets blown up by a car bombing.

Dana Walsh gets this in-universe, with Cole at least. Despite the fact that she was The Mole and betrayed him, he can't help but feel disgusted after finding out that Jack murdered her in cold blood even after she begged for her life.

Most notably, Dubaku doing this in Season 7 adds a lot of depth to the character. They befriended each other outside of work ("work") and she doesn't know he's a terrorist, meaning there's no need to clean up loose ends. No, the reason he asks her to flee the country is because, evidently, he genuinely cares for her.

Subverted with the Day 1 finale.

Also Subverted in season 8. Poor Renee...

Deconstructed in Day 3 with the kidnapping of Tony Almeida's wife. His decision to throw pretty much everything out the window in order to save Michelle is 100% emotionally understandable... but it's also morally indefensible, and when the season ends, he's facing treason charges and prison time.

Subverted one last time in the Live Another Day finale. Made even worse as Jack has saved Audrey multiple times over the course of seasons 4 through 6...only to have her suffer a textbook Take a Moment to Catch Your Death.

Carlos Bernard gets it in Season 7, with Janeane Garofalo taking the "With" credit.

Cherry Jones gets it in season 8, and Freddie Prinze, Jr. receives the "With" credit.

In "Live Another Day", Benjamin Bratt is given the "With" credit, while Kim Raver gets the "And" credit.

For recurring characters and guest stars:

In Season 1, under "Special Guest Star", Lou Diamond Phillips gets the "With", while Dennis Hopper gets the "And".

Sarah Clarke receives it in Seasons 2 and 3.

Season 4 gives it to Reiko Aylesworth under the "Special Guest Star" credit, while Shohreh Aghdashloo receives it in the "Guest Starring" list.

Although only for one episode, Season 5 gave it to Tzi Ma.

Season 6 had quite a few. Ricky Schroeder earned it under the "Guest Star" credit, while under "Special Guest Star", Jean Smart received the "With" mention and James Cromwell, Kim Raver, and Gregory Itzin received the "And" credits.

And Then Jack Was a Terrorist: Regardless of his intents and the fact that he ultimately wound up doing the right thing for the right reasons rather than the wrong thing for the right reasons, Jack still put several innocent peoples' lives in jeopardy when was attacking the conspirators and/or their mooks and, in spite of the fact that he was a corrupt bastard, committed first-degree murder against the Russian Foreign Minister. His actions wind up getting him labeled as an international terrorist in the eyes of almost everyone in the world.

Anti-Villain / Villain Protagonist: Jack effectively becomes this for the last stretch of the eighth season. Although Taylor, Logan, and eventually Suvarov are presented as the major antagonists and what they're doing is wrong, the show itself makes things clear that Jack, despite the cause he's fighting for, isn't exactly being all that admirable right now either.

Anyone Can Die: If you go to the Character sheet and do a Find for "Killed Off For Real," you'll find it eighty-six times. Countless characters get killed off in the show.

Not even Jack Bauer is safe from death. In one season, Jack is killed off by accident while being tortured. The terrorists who tortured him did bring him back to life, because they wanted information, though, but they confirmed that he was dead.

Arch-Enemy: Jack has had three adversaries who qualify, thanks to their penchants for getting to him personally.

NinaMyers, who kills Jack's wife at the end of Season 1 and unexpectedly pops up in the following two seasons to make his life hell.

Cheng Zhi. He already does a good job of getting on Jack's bad side by personally capturing and torturing him for two years in China (and similarly doing the same to Audrey when she comes looking for him). By Live Another Day, Cheng cements this status when he orchestrates Audrey's death and attempts to provoke a war between China and the US. In their final confrontation, Jack finishes him off with all of the vindictiveness that he'd inflicted on the Drazens back in Season 1.

Artistic License – Biology: When it's revealed in Season 3 that the Cordilla virus has been modified to make its incubation period just one hour instead of the 14 hours it originally was, everyone acts as if this makes it a much bigger threat. If anything, this would actually make it less dangerous, since infected people would present symptoms much sooner and thereby be easier to quarantine, and also wouldn't be able to travel as far before the virus killed them, thereby limiting how much it could spread.

This trope is slightly averted, as the doctor incorrectly diagnoses him as being in V-Fib, to which a defibrillator is actually used to restore a normal heart rhythm. However, the ECG actually shows a flatline (Asystole), which is treated with CPR and epinephrine (adrenaline), and after a few shocks with the defibrillator, this is what Jack and Curtis use for treatment.

This all said, the attempt to save him is rather pathetic, and he's declared dead a mere minute after he crashes. In contrast, a patient in asystole is declared dead after extensive efforts to revive them, and past the threshold at which brain death occurs, usually something on the order of 10-15 minutes. To make this worse, this all takes place in a fully-equipped medical facility, with CPR starting within seconds. The doctors likely still had time to try to revive him, particularly if Jack and Curtis had continued with CPR in the meantime.

The end result is that while asystole is a very dangerous medical condition, given the resources available and the minimal delay in starting CPR, there would have been a respectable chance of saving his life if they hadn't given up so quickly.

Artistic Licence – Nuclear Physics: Possibly justified since Jack may have been bluffing. In Season 8, Jack threatens a terrorist that if the radiological device goes off, he'll escort his mother to the detonation site, claiming that she'll absorb a lethal dose of Cs-137 in five seconds, in order to keep him from killing himself to preserve the mission. The problem? There's no way for Cs-137 levels to be high enough to give a lethal dose in five seconds, and certainly not in open air. Also, if it were possible to do that, the agonizing death would cease to be agonizing simply by hanging around for a full minute, at which point enough radiation would be absorbed to destroy the central nervous system — two weeks of vomiting your guts out becomes twenty minutes of delirium followed by slipping into a coma and never waking up.

Artistic License Technology: Whenever someone (typically Chloe) has to hack something and we see an IP-address, there's a very good chance that the IP-address is completely impossible in the real world. All IP-addresses shown can be assumed to be I Pv 4, since that was the standard when the show first came out, and as such consist of 4 numbers separated by dots (for instance, 192.168.0.0, which is typically the gateway-address for whatever network you are connected to). None of these numbers can be higher than 255, and the first is usually 10 or 192 (10 for Class A networks, 192 for Class C networks). On more than one occasion, the IP-addresses in 24 completely ignore the rules, as seen for instance near the end of Live Another Day, where Chloe accesses a computer whose IP-address is completely impossible (for one thing, the third number is somewhere in the 5000-range)! Generally speaking, if Chloe is the one doing the hacking, you can be absolutely sure that the IP-address breaks the rules established by the I Pv 4-standard.

Members of the Palmer Administration conspire to assassinate the President.

Aaron Pierce foils an assassination attempt on the Russian President Yuri Suvarov and his wife Anya.

Audrey Raines was close to assassinating Christopher Henderson, but her morality got the best of her.

Attempted Rape: One of the goons tries to rape Kim in Season 1, but Teri instead offers herself. She then takes the opportunity to steal his cell phone and call for help.

Vladimir Laitanan tried to rape Renee in the past (it's strongly implied that he did rape her, and that it was covered up), and manages to blackmail her into sex during a second undercover mission, but when he actually tries to rape her in Season 8, she responds by stabbing him in the eye15 times.

Creator Joel Surnow is a major contributor to conservative causes and political candidates, and the show definitely represents a conservative, ends-justify-the-means worldview. Having said that, it depicts liberals, from President David Palmer (the only character explicitly identified as a Democrat) to Senator Blaine Mayer, as reasonable and sympathetic characters who (usually) don't stray into Strawman Political or Author Tract territory.

Though it does become an issue in Live Another Day, as it seems like a large part of why the show was brought back was to make a No Celebrities Were Harmed strawman of Julian Assange who actively helps terrorists.

The number of former Star Trek (particularly Enterprise) actors who appeared on the show dramatically increased since Brannon Braga and Manny Coto joined on as executive producers. Peter Weller in particular has appeared in four Coto-produced shows (Odyssey 5, Enterprise, 24, and Dexter).

Tony Almeida is frequently seen drinking out of a Chicago Cubs mug because the actor, Carlos Bernard, is a huge fan of the team.

Awesome, but Impractical: The IRK's nuclear program in season 8 which Pres. Hassan wanted to do away with because it was too expensive.

Back for the Dead: Milo, who returns in season 6 as a regular, does nothing of real importance and then dies.

Subverted with Charles Logan in season 6, since he eventually returns in season 8.

Jack himself is nearly tortured to death during Day 2. His heart actually stops and he's declared dead at the end of an episode. There is also the matter of him faking his death in Day 4 and returning in Day 5.

Both Big Bads from Season 1 and 3 are supposed to be dead, killed in the same historical wet-works operation; the first was the target, the second one of Jack's men. Surprise!

Badass Bookworm: Just because someone is a computer technician, doesn't mean they can't do awesome things with an assault rifle. Chloe rocks.

Carl Gadsen, the port authority supervisor who gets caught up in Season 7's events. While it's acknowledged that he's fearful of dealing with the Stark commandos (particularly as he has a pregnant wife to take care of), he goes along with Jack's plan to lead the group on. His refusal to die with a shot in the back, instead demanding that his killer look him in the eye when pulling the trigger, is remarkably courageous. Which makes it all the better when Jack saves his life at the last second.

Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: CTU, and to a lesser extent most American government agencies (not to mention the governent itself), is woefully bad at its job, despite its rep as a premier counter-terrorist unit. Its agents and support staff are frequently either blackmailed, let personal issues get in the way of handling a major crisis, or turn out to be The Mole (sometimes there are several operating at once — other times innocent people are easily framed, even tortured for "confessions"); Jack himself has fallen victim to the first two failings several times. It has also been attacked on multiple occasions, including by biological and chemical weapons they were supposed to be hunting down. But its worst record is the numerous terrorist attacks that happen on its watch, and especially the fact that they often find out only hours before they are scheduled to take place. Several are successful, including a couple of small-scale nuclear attacks, nerve gas attacks, biological terrorism, and numerous high-level assassinations. The rest are thwarted only at the last minute, and often with lots of casualties. It's a miracle that there is a state left to defend.

The Bad Guy Wins: Played perfectly straight on Day 8. Samir Mehran had two primary goals: assassinate President Omar Hassan, and prevent the IRK/U.S. treaty from being signed. Not only does Mehran kill Hassan himself (in a rather brutal fashion), but the president of the United States doesn't go through with signing the treaty after she realizes the conspiracy behind it. Even though Mehran was killed and will never live to see what will happen in his home country, chances are, the terrorists back home will treat him as a martyr and praise Mehran as though he were a hero.

Bavarian Fire Drill: From the page for the trope - "This is standard operating procedure for both the good and bad guys on 24."

Beard of Sorrow: Jack Bauer at the beginning of Seasons 2 and 6. In both cases, the beard is shaved off before the end of the first episode.

After his presidency, Charles Logan grows a beard too.

Being Good Sucks: Oh does it ever in this world. Jack, Chloe, the Palmer family, Allison Taylor, they all lose everything they have and all their loved ones by the time the series ends. Yet every time they are given the choice of helping or walking away, they will always choose to help no matter the cost to them.

Bench Breaker: In season eight, Jack escapes by smashing his chair and attacking his captor.

There was also the season 3 occurence while he was being held by Nina Myers.

Benevolent Boss: Although the show seems to specialize in Bad Bosses, there are some pretty good ones, notably President David Palmer. President Taylor seems to be headed this way as well. Bill Buchanan, although relatively mid-level on the political food chain, qualifies. Despite conflicting loyalties, when push comes to shove, Karen Hayes also becomes this.

Season 5: Beside end-of-season villain Cheng Zhi, pretty much all of Day 5's antagonists can be split into two categories; the Russian Separatists and the American conspirators trying to cover it up. Therefore, we have a Big Bad Duumvirate; from the Russian side, it's Vladimir Bierko, and from the American conspirator side, it's Charles Logan.

Day 4: The American conspirators (and Cheng Zhi) who unsuccessfully tried to have Jack killed, though they were all dealt with by the next season.

Day 5: Graem Bauer, though he was also taken care of in the next season.

Big Damn Heroes: Jack and various members of CTU get these moments quite often.

Renee Walker saves Jack and Cole with only a handful of bullets and five seconds in Season 8 after the two spent more than half of the episode shooting at terrorists pinning them down.

Renee saved Jack from one guy who was about to put a bullet in his brain after Jack took out most if not all of the other terrorists with his sidearm.

A similar scenario occurs when President Hassan caps a mook in Jack and Renee's blind spot. Also, depending on your view of the entire hostage scenario, turning himself in and getting executed rather than be indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans seems like a BDM, too.

Blown Across the Room: Jack in Day 8. Justified by the physics, for once: he helps a repentant suicide bomber duck himself into a half-open oxygen chamber. Most of the blast is absorbed by the thick metallic door, but the door still throws him across the room.

In the Season 7 finale, Kim appears in only two scenes: the first one and the last one.

Season 6 begins with Jack in Cheng Zhi's custody, being handed over from China to the US via Bill Buchanan. The final hour of the day has Cheng in Jack's custody, with Cheng bitterly telling Bill that China won't abandon him like the US abandoned Jack.

For the series as a whole, both Seasons 1 and 8 have Jack start the day interacting with his family, in the hopes of creating a stronger foundation for Kim. They both also end with Jack being driven over the edge of despair due to the death of a love interest.

Bottomless Bladder: Nine seasons, nine days, only two bathroom breaks (one in season four, another in Live Another Day) so far. And not for main characters.

This could be justified by having characters go to the bathroom while they're off-screen, since nobody wants to watch someone take a toilet-break in the middle of the action. And most of the scenes taking place in bathrooms are because someone is talking on the phone and they don't want the CTU to know.

Break the Cutie: Renee Walker's inevitable descent from Lawful Good to Chaotic Good, until it's alluded to in the season seven finale that she has ended up just as maverick as Jack. Made especially evident when she tells Chloe to "do what she has to do", a phrase that was previously attributed only to Jack.

Confirmed in season eight. She apparently suffered a mental breakdown off-camera between seasons and is currently showing signs of an impending Roaring Rampage of Revenge with a streak of axe craziness.

Broken Aesop: In Season 8, the two military officers conspire against President Taylor to turn the IRK President over to the terrorists to get the terrorists to not detonate the nuke in New York City. They succeed, and, although they kill president Hassan, the terrorists DO disarm the nuke (which CTU would NOT have found and stopped in time otherwise). Taylor angrily denounces the pair of conspirators and has them arrested. So we get TWO broken aesops: 1. It is wrong to try to save the lives of tens of thousands, even if CTU is incompetent, because disobeying the president is far worse. 2. If you give terrorists what they want, they will comply with you and not cause further trouble.

Burner Phones: This was seen all the time, especially given that the characters seemed to be on the phone half the time anyway. Oftentimes they, including Bauer, didn't want to be traced, hence the regular use of burner phones. Also played with in various ways such as placing a phone in another vehicle to trick any tracking that might be done.

Bus Crash: Chloe's husband Morris and her son Prescott apparently died between season 8 and Live Another Day.

Butt-Monkey: The U.S. Secret Service seems to be this for the show, as they were the only government agency less competent and more corrupt then, well, CTU itself. Unless Aaron Pierce was on the scene, the Secret Service would always fail to protect their charges. This particularly apparent on Day 7, when the First Husband's bodyguard is a traitor and, later on, when General Juma captures the White House out from under their noses.

And let's not forget Ramon and Hector Salazar from season 3, although that was more of a case of "evil and eviler."

And in some way, Jack and Tony themselves.

Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In season 1, Kim and her friend sneak out after curfew to meet some boys... and, as a consequence, are kidnapped, beaten, possibly raped, and in Kim's friend's case, run over by a car and then murdered by the man who killed her father after she snuck out, and then impersonated him so he could track her down.

Jack. Teri (Day 1), Claudia (Day 3), Renee (Day 8), and Audrey (Day 9) provide ample evidence for this. He even ended up shooting Nina himself in Day 3. Kate Warner and Diane Huxley were lucky enough to just get Put on a Bus, though.

Chloe seems to carry the curse as well, as most of the men she's been close to (Edgar, Milo, Morris, Adrian) have all kicked the bucket.

Cassandra Truth: The extent to which Jack's bosses cooperate with him is inversely proportional to the extent to which Jack knows, and can stop, the bad guys' plans.

In fact, the chance that any given character will be told some variant of "Don't bother me, I'm busy!" is directly proportional to the probability that they know or are paying attention to something important. See the particularly egregious case of Carrie in season 3. CTU is for the most part a whole organization of Obstructive Bureaucrats.

Sherry Palmer: "Let me help you." This is nearly always an Oh, Crap! moment, at least for the audience.

"We're in the middle of an international crisis!"

"Chloe, I need you to do something for me".

Tony's particular inflection of the word "Yeah".

"Move!"

"Copy that."

"Set up a perimeter."

Every single time Jack puts another character in a sleeper hold (which is quite a bit), it's always followed up with him saying "Don't fight it."

Caught on Tape: In the fifth season, former President David Palmer is assassinated and the wife of current president Charles Logan, Martha Logan, is convinced it has something to do with something he wanted to tell her. She says that they had a phone conversation the night before in which he expressed that he wanted to talk to her in person about a matter of national security. So somebody dredges up a recording in which Palmer says that "it's hardly a matter of national security" but he wants to invite her to charity dinner. Of course, everyone dismisses her as crazy because she's had mental issues in the past and is on meds, but later it turns out the recording is doctored or fake.

The Chessmaster: Many, but particularly personified by Alan Wilson in season 7. He is essentially the man behind every single event in seasons 5 and 7, meaning that he was behind David Palmer's assassination, Charles Logan's scandalous presidency [including the Sentox nerve gas conspiracy], and the assassination of Tony's wife Michelle and their unborn son. It's amazing how he ended up lasting a full TWO seasons unscathed until the finale of season 7. Truly, he's the Biggest of all the Bads in the series thus far.And exposition concerning Renee's return in Day 8 implies that he got away with absolutely everything while she got scolded by the powers that be for torturing him.

Children Forced to Kill: Redemption included some children being trained to kill by the followers of an African general.

Chronic Hero Syndrome: Whether he's shot, stabbed, declared dead, in a depression, recovering from two years in Chinese captivity, or just plain getting jerked around by his boss, Jack cannot stop trying to save people.

Even being labeled a terrorist doesn't stop Jack from trying to save people.

In Season 2, Jack saves Nina by giving her a few mouth breathes, without fixating her chest or using any compression at all. It works.

The Reliable part is averted in Season 4, when Paul Raines dies after Jack forces the doctors at gunpoint to work on another patient with critical information, after a fairly pathetic attempt to save his life. See Artistic License – Medicine for more details.

CIA Evil, FBI Good: In Season 7, the FBI views the now-defunct CTU as a reckless, immoral institution.

Day 1 takes place on both Primary Day and—it is later revealed—the two-year anniversary of Operation Nightfall. The latter is the true reason for the Drazens going after David Palmer; the fact that it fell on such a big day for Palmer's presidential campaign is entirely incidental.

Nina Myers' return in Day 3, where she shows up as the other bidder for an auction in which Jack happens to be taking part.

Tony and Michelle's (separate) returns to CTU in Day 4.

In Day 6, Abu Fayed turns out to have stolen his suitcase nukes from Graem and Phillip Bauer. Even ignoring Graem and Phillip's involvement in the unrelated events of Day 5, what are the odds that Fayed would have two separate connections to Jack and to Jack's estranged family?

In Day 7, Jack just happens to be in Washington DC, where Tony, Chloe, and Buchanan are carrying out an underground operation to fight the terrorist threat.

Crapsack World: Ostensibly set in the real world at that. Terrorist attacks are commonplace, and the government has allowed intense interrogations of guilty, or sometimes even innocent people, and for government agencies to have the ability to spy on every American, in an attempt to prevent said terrorist attacks, and is only successful sometimes. Almost every Authority Figure is either corrupt, or on the verge of becoming one, no matter how idyllic they are at the start.

Crazy-Prepared: Jack, as well as whichever Big Bad he's facing at the time.

Da Chief: Usually the head of CTU, or the Regional Director. In a severe crisis, the President of the United States takes on this role.

To the point where, when watching Day 1 again, the US President seems strangely absent.

Dangerous Workplace: CTU has suffered nerve gas attacks, bombings, and a takeover by the Chinese mafia.

In particular, becoming head or acting head of CTU is up there with Star TrekRed Shirt as one of the most doomed occupations in the universe.

Darker and Edgier: Not that the show wasn't dark already, but the final act of Season 8 takes things to a new extreme. President Hassan and Renee Walker are killed within the space of two episodes, Jack and President Taylor both commit their own Face–Heel Turn, leaving Chloe the only "good guy" trying to do the right thing and stop Jack's Roaring Rampage of Revenge before he starts a world war.

Day 9 is overall more cynical from the beginning, with Chloe taking on a darker personality as a result of her family's death, Heller is slowly losing his mind to Alzheimers, and one of the most evil villains the series has seen to date, culminating in arguably the biggest Downer Ending of the series.

Dashed Plot Line: Not with episodes (since each episode picks up exactly where the last left off), but with seasons, which are separated by several year intervals.

The Dead Have Names: Second season: In the aftermath of the detonation of a nuclear bomb, the National Guard has quelled unrest in Georgia by firing rubber bullets into a crowd, but accidentally ended up killing a young Middle Eastern boy. When President Palmer's advisors relate this to him, he asks what the boy's name was, and Lynne Kresge admits that they don't know. Palmer's not satisfied with this. "The boy had a name. Find out."

Death by Materialism: There are dozens of greedy little bastards who are only in it for the money, and they are more than likely expendable. For instance, Michael Amador in Season 3, who went behind the Big Bad's back so he could score himself 240 million dollars. Later in the season, after escaping CTU custody, he meets one of the antagonist's associates so he can get more money and passports to leave the country. When he opens the briefcase, he realizes it's full of C-4. Cue Oh, Crap! face.

Or Jack Bauer, although in his case, the terrorists who tortured him until his heart stopped probably weren't doctors, so they might just have assumed he was dead within seconds of his heart stopping. They only resuscitated him because he had information that they wanted.

The last minutes of episode 8x04 and the teasers for 8x05 show us Renee is going way that way.

Jack is notably like this for most of season 2. The terminally ill George Mason realizes that he wanted to be the one to pilot the nuclear bomb away, since he's still blaming himself for Teri's death and feels that his own will bring some sort of atonement for what happened. Mason's able to talk Jack out of it and convince him to switch places.

Jack also acts like this in seasons 6 and 7 after being tortured by the Chinese at the end of season 5. He attempts to sacrifice himself numerous times, but they either become unnecessary or someone else winds up doing so in his place. By the end, after he's infected with a lethal pathogen, Jack is prepared to finally accept his death, and it takes Kim making amends after all these years and refusing to let him pass on that ultimately give him a reason to want to live again by season 8... until as stated above, where events cause him to revert back to a death seeker mentality.

Dehumanization: In Redemption a bunch of Child Soldiers are being trained to kill by presenting them with a trussed up enemy and denying his humanity, calling him a "cockroach" and having them chant "Kill the cockroach!"

In "3:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M." from Day 1, Jack chews Nina out upon her arriving back at CTU when had meant for her to stay with Teri and Kim at the safe house to make them feel safe. She assures him, "They are safe, Jack. I settled them in. Paulson and Breeher are taking good care of them and the extra security team is in place." As she's speaking this, the show's trademark splitscreen shows them in a car fleeing for their lives, followed by a slam cut to this scene.

Similarly, in "10:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M." from Day 2, Kim Bauer and her charge, the young Megan, are arriving at CTU after being told to do so by Tony Almeida. "Where are we?" asks Megan to Kim, who assures her, "Don't worry, we're safe here." Splitscreen cut to the counter on the Time Bomb currently in place at CTU, which is set to go off in about eight minutes.

Michelle's death for Tony, which sets him off so bad by the end that he's working against the good guys and the bad guys.

Audrey's death for pretty much everyone in Day 9.

Diabolus ex Machina: If you think the episode will have a happy ending, it won't. If you think the ending is bad enough, it will get worse.

Did Not Get the Girl: Jack's eternal fate, helped partially by a dose of It's Not You, It's My Enemies. And he's not exaggerating that score either, seeing as five of his Love Interests end up dead over the course of the series (Teri Bauer, Nina Myers, Claudia Hernandez, Renee Walker, Audrey Heller Raines Boudreau). He does have three other love interests who are still alive (Kate Warner, Diane Huxley, and Marilyn Bauer), but he's no longer with them.

"Die Hard" on an X: whenever any location is taken over by terrorists, which is frequently. (For that matter, 24 itself could probably be described as "Die Hard on a clock.")

According to Alan Sepinwall's The Revolution Was Televised, the show was originally conceived as essentially "Die Hard the Series." That changed when Kiefer Sutherland was cast in the lead, and the humor and general self-awareness was toned down significantly.

Averted in Day 6: Abu Fayed remains the primary threat from Episode 1 to Episode 17 (although at one point it becomes a Big Bad Duumvirate with Dmitri Gredenko). After Fayed's defeat, the story moves on to a separate group of villains and a mostly unrelated threat.

Downplayed for Day 7: Iké Dubaku starts as out as the main villain in the first part of the season, but the prequel, Redemption, clearly established both Benjamin Juma as his higher-up and Jonas Hodges as Juma's ally.

Averted in Day 9 (Live Another Day): Margot Al-Harazi shows up two episodes in and remains the Big Bad for the majority of the season. After her death, a different group of villains take over the plot, albeit using the same override device that Margot was using.

Day 10 (Legacy): Jadalla is the Big Bad for most of the season, until he is killed by Eric two episodes before the finale. The real villain is Ibrahim, who was thought to be dead for most of the season.

Disproportionate Retribution: In retaliation for Renee's murder, Jack goes on a killing spree, including Dana Walsh, Pavel Tokarev, Mikhail Novakovich and all his bodyguards, and he intends to kill the Russian president too.

In "Live Another Day", Jack now has another one with Kate Morgan. This time around, though, Chloe has one too in the form of Jordan Reed. They're pretty much a gender-flipped version of what Jack and Chloe used to be back in their CTU days.

Day 5 ends with Jack being abducted by Cheng Zhi and shipped to a Chinese prison.

Day 8 ends with Taylor resigning from the presidency in disgrace, and Jack becoming a fugitive from both the United States and Russia.

Day 9 ends with Audrey taking a bullet from a gunman and dying, a devastated Heller lamenting that soon he won't even be able to remember his daughter, and Jack turning himself in to the Russians to save Chloe.

Almost every main character from all 9 seasons of the show eventually gets one in some form or another. Some characters like David Palmer or Renee Walker wind up getting killed. Others have to deal with some sort of great loss, such as Erin Driscoll (whose daughter committed suicide), Sandra Palmer (whose brothers are both dead), and James Heller (whose daughter is killed). And then there are the characters whose lives are completely ruined, such as Tony Almeida (in prison) and even Jack Bauer himself (captured by the Russians). It's essentially impossible for any main cast member to get a happy ending.

Legacy ends on a somber note, with Rebecca Ingram dead, leaving her husband John Donovan a widower. Over a hundred civilians are dead because of the George Washington Bridge bombing, and both of the Dudayev siblings are dead, leaving their father without any children. Asim Naseri is dead, leaving his daughter Ara without her father, and Drew Phelps is dead too, leaving his mother behind. Even Donald Simms, who although he was a bad guy, kills himself, leaving his wife and children behind.

The Dragon: Every season has one, but played to perfection with season five's Christopher Henderson.

Dragon Their Feet: In Day 3 even after Stephen Saunders is caught (and sometime later killed by the widow of one of his victims) Jack still has to spend a few more hours stopping his courier for the Cordilla virus.

Usually when the bad guy imitates an FBI/CTU agent. Foiled in Season 7 when Jack uncovers an assassin dressed as FBI by noticing his incorrect shoes.

In most cases, just as an FBI/CTU agent is alerted that there's an impostor, said impostor miraculously appears out of nowhere and shoots him (Seasons 4 and 7).

Dropped a Bridge on Him: Somewhat unavoidable for a show so prone to offing characters but mostly averted. The closest examples were probably both Milo (who seemingly just came back to do nothing and then get shot in the face) and Curtis in season 6 and Michelle in season 5. Tony just barely avoided it himself in the fifth season due to later being Not Quite Dead..

Dude, Where's My Respect?: You would think saving America from destruction, every, single, season, would give Jack some credibility with his CTU superiors or the government. You would be wrong. Every new President needs to be reminded who this Jack Bauer person is, and every season a parade of Obstructive Bureaucrats will ignore him, detain him, or try to kill him.

Averted in Live Another Day, where in the space of five hours Jack goes from international fugitive to being given the President's blessing on his efforts to stop the terrorist attacks.

The Dulcinea Effect: Jack had spent less than 40 hours in Renee's company and decided to throw away his life and all his moral standards to go after the people responsible for her death. Justified in that Jack has lost so many people he cared about over the years and his reaction to Renee's death probably had little to do with Renee herself and more to do with simply being the straw that broke the camel's back. One thing to keep in mind about the complexity of their relationship. Of all the women Jack had known in his life, she is the ONLY one who accepted him for what he was and could relate to him. Not even Audrey or Terry could say those things. And there's the fact that she's just as crazy as he is.

Dying as Yourself: President Heller's reason for attempting to surrender during Live Another Day, to allow him to die on his own terms before he loses his mind to Alzheimer's disease. Subverted when he survives the ordeal and, at the end of the season, waits for the disease to take him over.

"Day Five: 2AM - 3AM," where Jack stows away on a flight in search of an incriminating recording.

In Season 4, President John Keeler spends all of his screentime on Air Force One because of all the terrorist attacks happening across the country. Turns out this was intentional for the story, as Marwan's ultimate plan involves shooting the plane down.

"Day 3: 7:00 - 8:00 PM" has Jack spend the entire episode on a plane heading to Mexico, while "1:00 - 2:00 AM" sees him on one for the entire return trip back to Los Angeles.

Everybody Owns a Ford: Ford is a major sponsor of the show, and savvy viewers quickly figured out that only the heroes drive them. This spoiled a major plot twist in season 2, when the vaguely mysterious Muslim who drove a Ford Thunderbird was innocent, while his blonde, all-American, import-driving wife turned out to be a traitor.

Everybody's Dead, Dave: Near the end of "Day 8: 1PM - 2PM", Pillar hears this from Mikhail Novakovich's wounded bodyguard, who reveals that Jack has already broken in and slaughtered everyone else.

Every Car Is a Pinto: In a first season episode, Teri and Kim escape from the terrorists by car and then Teri parks it at the edge of a cliff. She gets out, with Kim still in it (Kim's fine, but Teri doesn't know that, leading to her amnesia, discussed elsewhere here.) It, of course, is destroyed in a fiery explosion.

Everyone Is Related: A large majority of the characters in Season 6 are all Bauers, or spouses/offspring of such.

Jack - Stephen Saunders in Season 3, Christopher Henderson in Season 5, Tony Almeida in season 7, and Cheng Zhi in Live Another Day.

Inverted with Cole in season 8: He's actually the good counterpart to Jack by the end. Because of this, Jack gets to be the only character on both sides of this trope.

Michelle Dessler - Carrie Turner

Karen Hayes - Miles Papazian

Inverted with the FBI at the beginning of season 7: they're technically the good counterparts to the "unofficial CTU" lineup of Jack, Chloe, Bill, and Tony, who are essentially a rogue group, though they're both working towards the same goal of stopping Dubaku.

The end of Season Seven reveals that the entire season was nothing but Tony's attempt to get close to Alan Wilson to kill him in revenge for killing his wife and son.

The events of Day 3 are largely set in motion by Jack, Tony, and Gael Ortega.

Wayne Palmer pulls one during Day 6 against Fayed's country so they can give him a full dossier that will hopefully lead them to where Fayed has been hiding his suitcase nukes.

Evil Versus Evil: Used in several seasons, but the final season spins a surprising take on this trope by pitting Fallen Heroes Jack and President Taylor against one another. If Taylor gets what she wants, her peace treaty will succeed, but the motives behind President Hassasn's assassination will be covered up because of it and the injustice will be allowed to go on. If Jack gets what he wants, the conspiracy behind Hassan's death is exposed, but he'll also kill all those responsible, which includes several members of the Russian government, particularly its president, which would lead to worldwide war. Neither outcome is all that good. Cole's "there are no good guys" line late in the season pretty much sums up the current status of the show: Jack nor Taylor is really a "hero" at this point anymore. In fact, Cole and Chloe are essentially the only real characters really resembling heroes now, as they're attempting to go with the preferable solution to expose the conspiracy and not just instantly take the role of judge, jury, and executioner into their hands like Jack is now doing. Their efforts do in fact eventually lead both Jack and Taylor to see the light by the end (see Heel Realization below), although at this point both have arguably crossed a line that can never be undone.

Exposition: Many episodes begin with expository dialogue filling the viewers in on the current crisis and/or what happened at the end of the previous hour. Day 4 is especially bad about this.

And for all intents and purposes, Jack himself in the final season... unless of course, you feel that nearly starting a war that could potentially lead to the downfall of civilization as we know it all in the name of a revenge crusade is a heroic goal.

Fake Defector: Gael in season 3, Tom Lennox in season 6, Jack on numerous occasions, Tony in Season 7. For both sides.

Fake Kill Scare: used by Jack Bauer when he pretends to kill the son of Syed Ali, a terrorist he is interrogating.

Jack fakes Nina Meyers' death in Season 1 and Renee Walker's in season 7. Both ended up dead for real in subsequent seasons, the former by Jack's hand.

Fallen Hero: Numerous examples. Ira Gaines' backstory revealed him as having been a Navy SEAL before he became a ruthless mercenary. Stephen Saunders was a member of Jack's Special Forces team that was assigned to take out Victor Drazen, and Christopher Henderson was Jack's mentor.

Tony is the series' embodiment of this trope.

The final season is memorable for having both Jack himselfANDPresident Taylor becoming this.

Fanservice: At the end of Season 4, Mandy takes Tony's shirt off for no apparent reason.

Pissing off Jack Bauer. Alternatively, Audrey Raines after her visit to China.To go more in-depth, she gets captured by the Chinese Big Bad/Man Behind The Man, and is the bargaining chip for the circuit board. Unfortunately, before the deal is made, she is tortured and overdosed with near-fatal amounts of liquid copper, which not only traumatizes her but leaves her in a half-paralyzed, Heroic B.S.O.D.'d state, and proving that the Big Bad is savvy. By the end of the season, she's recovering at home and Jack Bauer promises her father to step away so he can no longer be a danger to her, with the silent clock running at the end of the episode to honor his sacrifice.

Jack also counts here; since the Chinese got him first, he he had to go through twenty months of torture like Audrey did before he was released. And he never said anything while he was there, so he was useless to the Chinese.

As of the end of the series, Charles Logan after a botched suicide attempt that leaves him with severe brain damage, code-speak for becoming a vegetable for the rest of his life.

Day 5: He's faced in the penultimate episode (Vladimir Bierko), as there are no deaths in the finale.

Day 6: Phillip Bauer

Day 7: Tony Almeida

Day 8: The government pursuers

Day 9: Cheng Zhi

Fingore: Used numerous times as a torture/blackmail tactic (by both the villains and Jack).

In Day 4, Jack breaks Joe Prado's fingers.

In Day 6, Jack severs one of Anatoly Markov's fingers.

In Day 7, Iké Dubaku tries to coerce President Taylor by ordering this on her husband.

In Day 9 (Live Another Day), Margot Al-Harazi orders this on Simone (her own daughter) to coerce Simone's husband.

First Day from Hell: Lynn McGill's first day as head of CTU Los Angeles involves his getting mugged by his junkie sister and her boyfriend, and that mugging leading directly to a nerve gas attack on CTU headquarters. Oh, and the sister gets executed, gangland style, to clean up loose ends. Oh, and McGill has to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save everyone from said nerve gas less than two hours later. Don't envy the guy who has to write the "fallen in the service of our country" letters to Mrs. McGill there.

Inverted in day 2, when, after his betrayal, Mike Novick starts to call President Palmer by his first name, only for Palmer to rebuke him and demand that he be referred to as 'Mr. President'. It's a sign that their once close friendship is over.

Foregone Conclusion: From the moment Jack was infected by the Prion variant in Season 7 - a bioweapon so deadly that there was no 100% certifiable cure - it was obvious he'd survive somehow, given at least that he'd already signed on for Seasons 7 and 8 back in 2007. The fact that Elisha Cuthbert's return that season was mentioned by the producers also drove the point home.

The death of Teri Bauer is what ultimately casts a haunting shadow over all of Jack's actions for every season following the first one.

In the first season finale, when Jack calls Nina out for the crimes she committed, he specifically cites Richard Walsh, Jamey Farrell, and Robert Ellis as friends and co-workers who suffered because of her actions.

Thrown into Jack's face a few times. Specifically, in Season 7, Larry Moss points out that people who hang around Jack tend not to survive, mentioning Teri Bauer, Ryan Chappelle, and Curtis Manning as proof. Though this falls a bit flat, as Ryan's death was commanded specifically by the President himself under orders from Stephen Saunders and would've likely been forced to occur whether Jack was present or not, and Curtis died because he was unwilling to listen to a direct order from Jack, instead letting his personal motives interfere with CTU's primary objective. Regardless, it goes to show how the body count is kept in mind well after the deaths occur.

Front 13, Back 9: Bauer's wife and daughter rescued and the first assassin killed in the 13th episode, providing some resolution if the back 11note was not ordered. The scene where the second assassin was dispatched could have been cut in that case.

Good lord, Live Another Day. First a small-time hacker defects from his organization to try to sell a military override device to Margot Al-Harazi seeking revenge on President Heller for her husband's death. She's killed, then it turns out the leader of the hacker group, Adrian Cross, had created it with the intent of breaking through the strategic infrastructure of every country's military, which he plans to distribute to the entire world. Then it turns out that the device was originally commissioned by Cheng Zhi, with the intent of starting a war between the United States and China.

Tony in Day 7 very much goes here, with almost all of it relying on all the events of the day being one major coincidence after another to help him track down and murder Alan Wilson.

Gas Leak Cover-Up: On Live Another Day, a drone attack on a house that the CIA was investigating is covered up as being a gas main explosion.

Genre Deconstruction: You think James Bond had to deal with so much crap? A standard hero will defend us no matter how hard the bad guys make it. Jack will defend us no matter how hard we make it.

Godzilla Threshold: The Series. Jack himself is a walking, talking personification of the threshold.

The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: In the final season, Cole and Chloe as the good, Jack himself and President Taylor as the bad, and President Logan and Russian President Suvarov as the evil.

Good People Have Good Sex: Intentional or not, it seems that villainous characters on the show don't last very long in bed. A great example of this is in Season 8, with Renee Walker. The sex she has with villain Vladimir Laitanan to maintain her cover? Five minutes, give or take. The sex she has with hero Jack Bauer when they get their long-awaited Relationship Upgrade? Nearly the entire episode.

Gorn: In season eight, Jack disembowls and kills Pavel trying to get a sim card, as well as revenge against Pavel for killing Renee. Followed by how Jack killed Mikhail Novakovich by stabbing him with a fireplace poker and all of his guards in the next episode. It all happened off-camera, but the blood was EVERYWHERE.

Season 2 as a whole was really damn violent. The water torture scene that opens up the first episode was sickening, but that was nothing compared to when Big Bad Sayed Ali killed a non-CTU federal agent who helped Kate Warner find out if Reza's a terrorist or not. A. MOOK. USED. A. BUZZSAW. ON. THE. AGENT'S. BACK. Ugh. The viewers who complained about the torture during season 6 must not have been watching 24 that year.

Abu Fayed using a drill on Morris in season 6.

In season 6, the especially gut-wrenching scene where Asad sticks a knife into a man's kneecap.

Gory Discretion Shot: Played straight during the early seasons of the show (as stated above in Seasons 2 and 3). From Season 6 up, this trope was averted a couple times, and people being shot in the head (or in David Emerson's case, the neck) was shown on screen. When Season 8 came around, it got graphic. The viewers did not get to see a man being hacked apart by a machete in Redemption, so there's that at least.

Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: There was one in season 2 who didn't want to go through with the terror attack they were planning. He and his colleague ended up killing each other.

Handshake Refusal: In season 5, Jack Bauer reacts this way to his daughter's new boyfriend.

Bill Buchanan does this to Hamri Al-Assad in Season 6, though later he offers his own hand after it becomes clear that Assad is serious about cooperating with the U.S.

Happily Married: Subverted by Jack and Teri, in particular the latter's death, as well as Tony and Michelle's reconciliation after Season 4 that comes to a swift end during the start of Day 5. No President's marriage survived the show either; David and Sherri Palmer divorced in between the first two seasons and neither made it through the series alive, and Henry and Allison Taylor also divorced following the events of Day 7.

On the other hand, Bill Buchanan and Karen Hayes seem to be Happily Married, even when they're having to work at cross purposes.

Josef Bazhaev. Granted, his father had to convince him that he would be pardoned for his crimes, but still. Not even twenty seconds after he agrees to help the good guys, he gets shot.

Later in that very same episode, Farhad Hassan grows a conscience (sort of) and agrees to help CTU. And then he's shot in the back in the next episode.

In the series finale, Jason Pillar realizes that he and Charles Logan are cornered, and Pillar attempts to convince his boss that it would be best to come clean and help President Taylor find Jack and call off the hit on him. What does he get in return? Logan whacks him in the back of the head and proceeds to shoot him dead before attempting suicide, therefore taking the information to their graves. Particularly galling as the previous episode had Pillar tearfully confess that he had a daughter he wanted to return to.

Tony Almeida in season 7. Before the season, the Internet was ablaze about his upcoming Face–Heel Turn...which didn't even last for the entire two-night, four-hour season premiere event, as he turned out to be a Reverse Mole. No, wait, now he's actually a villain again. Hold on, now he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to gain the trust of the villains' boss so he can finally get close enough to kill the guy for revenge for killing his then-pregnant wife. Except the FBI needs that man alive, and on top of that he was willing to turn Jack into a living bomb in order to kill the guy, so he's still the enemy. Ah, screw it.

Charles Logan throughout his existence on the show. In season 4, he's a cowardly, incompetent President who allows Walt Cummings to put a hit on Bauer. While he maintains his weakness, he shows more compassion and trust in Bauer in the first half of season 5... until he's revealed as the Big Bad of the season. He makes yet another turn in season 6 when he selflessly helps Bauer find Grendenko and helps defuse an international incident with the Russians before he's stabbed by his ex-wife. When he returns in season 8, he's made yet another turn when he returns to being a full-blown villain again and drags President Taylor down with him. Evil All Along.

Mike Novick becomes a much nicer character after the BS he pulls in Season 2 — by Season 5 he's one of the best and most likeable characters on the show.

Allison Taylor, sort of. After Jumping Off the Slippery Slope by making a deal with Charles Logan to save the peace agreement without knowing all the variables, she digs herself deeper and deeper into a hole trying to cover it up, culminating in her basically threatening to blow Kamistan to hell with the entire might of the United States Military if Dalia Hassan does not sign the deal. And then, when she's a signature away from becoming a truly unredeemable character, she backs out and begins the process of making amends.

The Araz family, with the exception of Navi. It doesn't end well for Dina. Behrooz was seen alive in two deleted scenes, but since those scenes weren't actually part of Season 4, we can assume he didn't last long either.

Simone Al-Harazi in Day 9 after her mother executes a drone strike on a hospital in an attempt to kill her.

Heel Realization: Jack and Taylor both get respective ones in the series finale when they realize that their actions are doing far more harm than good. Jack gets his near the beginning after Chloe convinces him that killing Logan and Suvarov would lead to war, while Taylor has hers near the end after a video will Jack leaves makes her realize that everything she's been doing ever since following Logan's plans has perverted her ideals.

If anything, Jack arguably starts to come to his a little earlier in the penultimate episode when he holds Jason Pillar at gunpoint and Pillar yells at him that all he's doing is carrying out a need for vengeance and not actually meting out justice, with Jack ultimately admitting he's right, but at this point feels he doesn't have anything else left, the end of which even sees him sparing Pillar after the guy begs for his life and that he wants to see his daughter again. This, combined with Chloe's What the Hell, Hero? speech to him, likely contributed greatly to his quick Heel–Face Turn early on in the finale.

He Knows Too Much: at least once a season, most notoriously in Season 1 (with the agent responsible to "unlink" Bauer and Palmer's pasts), Walt Cummings in Season 5, and President Taylor's son in the backstory of Season 7.

David Palmer discovering Charles Logan's involvement in selling nerve gas to terrorists is what led to his assassination.

Jack after Teri's death is pretty much the show's defining moment of this trope. He's like this for most of season 2; even after finally going back into action to stop the bomb, he still has a Death Seeker attitude for a good chunk of it.

Michelle has one when she thinks Tony has been killed at the end of Season 4.

Jack has a major one when he was forced to kill Curtis in season 6.

In the same season, Morris has one after he's forced by Fayed to arm his suitcase nukes.

Cole has a minor one after learning that Jack used him, murdered Dana Walsh in cold blood, and actually did want to assassinate the conspirators behind Hassan's murder instead of just exposing them.

Audrey Raines has one after she is subjected to liquid copper torture for nearly two years between seasons 5 and 6 when she is held by Big Bad Cheng Zhi as leverage for a nuclear weapon circuit. Not only are the injections incredibly painful, they also destroys her mind, ultimately leaving her in a catatonic state. Miraculously, she seems to have recovered completely by Live Another Day...although Word of God says it took quite a few years and a lot of psychiatric care.

In season 7, Renee has two minor ones: the first when she fails to save Dubaku's innocent girlfriend after promising she would protect her, and the second upon discovering Larry Moss' murder.

In Live Another Day when Kate tells Jack Audrey is dead. Jack puts down his rifle and pulls out a handgun, and the look on his face makes it very clear what he was about two seconds from doing.

Hero Antagonist: CTU, the FBI, the government, or any other law present will become this whenever Jack has to break the rules in order to get the job done or he's being framed by one of the antagonists, which is generally at least 2-3 times a season. This is completely flipped on its head during the final arc when Jack goes rogue and effectively becomes an outright antagonist for his revenge trip against the Russians (and Logan) rather than his usual Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! reasons. In this case, despite the fact that Jack is still treated as the protagonist, we're actually supposed to be moreso rooting for CTU (or at least the main cast trio of Chloe, Cole, and Arlo Glass) at this point over Jack.

Heroic Sacrifice: Mason in season two, Chappelle in season three, Lynn in season five, Carl Benton in Redemption, Bill in season seven, Omar Hassan in season eight, and Jack in at least seasons two and six (but he survived).

Although Mason had less than 24 hours to live anyway and Lynn also would have died regardless. Lynn's also would have been more heroic if it wasn't his fault the attack happened in the first place.

Teri makes one in Season 1 when she offers herself to Eli to save Kim from being raped.

This happens unintentionally to Marika Donoso in Season 7, where she blinds The Dragon's driver, thus causing the vehicle they're in to crash. Ironically, she is the only one who dies; the bad guys live through it. But only for a short period of time.

During Day 6, Milo realizes that the mercenary squad that's assaulted CTU is going to kill the current person in charge (which would be Nadia at the time), so he intentionally takes her place, getting shot in the head as a result.

James Heller surrenders himself during Live Another Day to prevent more innocent deaths.

Jack hands himself over to the Russians in exchange for Chloe at the end of Day 9.

In late Season 8, Charles Logan pulls this when he blackmails the Russians into going along with his cover-up conspiracy, which involves them signing the very treaty they were trying to get out of.

In Live Another Day, after Margot Al-Harazi's death, it seems that Adrian Cross will take over as the primary villain. And then Cheng Zhi reappears, kills Cross and establishes himself as the final Big Bad.

Hollywood California: The show's setting - nine out of ten major terrorist threats happen here. Finally relocated in Season 7.

Hollywood Healing: Throughout the show, Jack has been shot, stabbed, tasered, gassed, suffered broken ribs, had a heart attack, and been rendered clinically dead twice. He typically requires little more than half an hour of recovery time before he's shooting terrorists again. In Season 8, it takes him only ten minutes to shake off a stab to the stomach.

In Season 7, Jack was infected by a prion based on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a condition for which there was apparently no cure. And then it turned out that a family member's stem cells might provide a cure after all, and Kim Bauer returned shortly thereafter.

Season 7: Jack forges an alliance with his own nemesis, Sen. Mayer, with the two men coming to an understanding and agreeing to try playing by each other's rules. ...Just before Mayer is killed for being in the way.

The very first scenes of the first episode of Day 8, with Jack enjoying family life with his granddaughter, are just heartbreaking to watch again once you know how that season — and the entire series — ends.

Later in Day 8, Jack and Renee have sex for nearly forty minutes and enjoy themselves after a rough night... shortly before a sniper kills Jack's new squeeze.

Reza Naiyeer in Season 2. During a pretty rotten afternoon, Reza starts feeling a little better when his ex-fiancée changes her mind and says she still wants to marry him. Then at the end of that episode, he finds out she's a terrorist, and she kills him.

Near the end of "Day 6: 4pm - 5pm," a bound-and-gagged Tom Lennox tries to twist a pressure valve so that he can raise an alarm and warn someone about the bomb. It's just enough to make us think he might succeed in thwarting the assassination attempt... but he doesn't.

In the finale of Day 9, Audrey is saved from Cheng's shooter and everything is okay... until a second shooter comes out of nowhere and guns her down.

On Day 3: 6AM - 7AM, after receiving Stephen Saunders' demand that Ryan Chappelle be executed, CTU believes they have finally found Saunders' location. Everything seems to be building up to a dramatic capture only for Chase to find the location is a ruse, leaving no option but for Chappelle to be executed.

Hot-Blooded: Jack Bauer is A FEDERAL AGENT! Who wants EVERYTHING DONE NOW! Because he's RUNNING OUT OF TIME!

Kim Bauer holds it so often it might as well be called the "Kim Ball" for the purposes of this show. This is semi-justified in terms of writing: she featured prominently in the first season because ultimately Jack and his family were a target for the terrorist attacks in the first place. Without Kim regularly making stupid decisions and putting herself in danger, there wouldn't be much of a reason to feature her at all in later seasons.

In Day 9, Audrey's death results from this trope. First, Audrey decides to step out for a clandestine meeting in a poorly lit and unsecured park, accompanied by only two bodyguards. Then, Kate Morgan's CIA team rescues Audrey, but instead of taking her away as quickly and safely as possible, they casually escort her toward the park's exit, none of them even considering the possibility of a second shooter. Naturally, Audrey ends up dead.

In Day 1, a major subplot centers around finding the mole in the organization and bringing them to justice. The stupid part is, that in Episode 2, they uncover conclusive evidence that Nina Myers is the mole, and everyone is instructed to not reveal any vital information while she's present. A few hours later, the CTU appears to have completely forgotten who the mole is, but they still suspect that there is a mole. Somehow, everyone is surprised when Nina Myers betrays Jack and his family at the end of the day, despite having learned that she couldn't be trusted about 20 hours earlier!

The CTU has, on average, AT LEAST some mole per season. For a government agency working to fight terrorists, they sure don't do a good job of vetting the people they hire.

Despite having moles in the organization all the time, and in spite of the classified work they do, NOBODY has apparently bought or installing surveillance microphones in the CTU Headquarters, much less in the bathrooms. Every time someone working in the CTU-HQ is talking on the phone, if they have something to hide, they will be having the phone call in the CTU's bathrooms. No exceptions.

The presidents (Palmer and Taylor especially) are portrayed as fighting constantly to not take the easy way out; to them, the ends do not justify the means. (The ones who do think that way are inevitably portrayed as villainous.) Confusingly, we're meant to perceive them as being just as heroic as Jack is, despite making the opposite decision he usually does.

Taylor changes her mind after a chat with Charles Logan.

In a lesser extent, David Palmer also applies. In season three, he hired Sherry Palmer to take care of Alan Milliken when he threatened to pull financial support for David's re-election, because [brother] Wayne Palmer slept with Milliken's wife, Julia. Granted, he probably didn't expect Sherry to basically kill him by not giving him his medication, but after what she did to David in the first two seasons, what exactly did he expect? More importantly, during season four, he signed off on the undercover operation to capture a Chinese consolate, which ended with another Chinese representative killed by friendly fire. Although Palmer and Jack knew the risks of the operation, they went through with it anyway to save LA from Marwan. Palmer's statement to Charles Logan when he panicked over the idea? "Sometimes, we got to get our hands dirty to do what needs to be done."

Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: YMMV, but during the last several episodes of Day 8, Dana Walsh moves in this direction. She acts in a slightly more likable manner when Jack confronts her with news of Renee's death, saying that it shouldn't have happened and that she's sorry. Later, she acts like a damsel in distress when the private interrogation group comes to pick her up, quite pathetically begging Chloe to save her. And her waterboarding torture is clearly played to show the terrible depths to which President Taylor has sunk in order to get the peace treaty signed.

In Season 5, Amy Martin is last seen screaming as Christopher Henderson makes an unexpected visit. Granted, what happens next is not actually shown, but considering that Henderson's just spent the last 40 minutes tracking her and her mom down, and is shooting EMTs just for being in the way...

It's Personal: In Redemption, Jack killed Ike Dubaku's brother, who was torturing him, so Ike followed him into jungles, where Benton tried to kill him. However, Ike's brother was never mentioned again in Season 7.

It Gets Easier: Characters opposed to torture early in the season, tend to be more willing to do so later in the season. Subverted with Renee; she becomes more willing to torture as the series progresses, but hates herself even more for doing it. Done with Kim Bauer when it comes to killing. She is very opposed to shooting Gary Matheson, who's been trying to kill her for awhile, the first time, but shoots him second time with a lot more ease. She still breaks down afterward, though. In Season 3 however, she does not appear to be bothered by it at all.

Frank Tramell in Redemption, who forces Jack to return to the United States to stand trial in exchange for Jack evacuating several children from Sangala. Tramell does at least show himself to be a man of his word.

Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Miles Papazian. Just about every other character that's been in charge and manages to be a pain for most of the other protagonists usually succeeds in also showing some sort of good side by the time we last see them. Despite the insistence of Karen Hayes that he ultimately is somebody who can be trusted in spite of his attitude, Miles sells everyone out the first chance he gets.

Jurisdiction Friction: Averted mostly. While CTU has butted heads with other agencies, usually the severe nature of a terrorist threat causes folks to put aside their differences.

One exception, of course, is the friction between CTU and FBI in Season 7. CTU doesn't actually exist anymore, but friction arises when the FBI is unhappily required to reactivate old CTU servers.

In the 24: Live Another Day novel Deadline, a character thinks to himself about the fact that contrary to the way things are usually portrayed in the movies, the arrival of the FBI generally doesn't spark an immediate rivalry with law enforcement agencies.

In Kilner's experience, the opposite was usually the truth. State or county cops with less manpower and typically with operational budgets that were already stretched to the limit would welcome the involvement of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Just in Time: Frequently subverted, although played straight on those rare occasions. Whenever Jack Bauer calls for backup, chances are, he'll kill a majority (or all) of the Mooks before they arrive.

Even though he never killed anyone on the show, Jonathan Matijevich, the thief of the identity of the reporter and the would-be assassin of President Palmer on Day 1, evaded arrest, and the show established that he was an experienced assassin.

Alexander Trepkosmight be this for Day 2, but Wayne's comment in Day 3's opening implies that he was arrested.

Mandy. Justified by the fact that the government needed her to stop Marwan and had to let her go.

Although he is still a saint compared to some of the other presidents in the show, David Palmer's actions in season 3 led to the deaths of 4 people, and all he did to atone was withdraw from the election.

Day 5 has a rather infuriating one: Miles Papazian, Logan's mole who erased the recording implicating Logan.

The crown of this trope for the show belongs to Day 9 with the unnamed gunman who killed Audrey and is able to escape from Kate, as he's never seen again for the rest of the finale. As it stands, he's the only person to directly kill someone close to Jack and not suffer some sort of grisly death at his hands like Conrad Haas or Pavel Tokarev have.

Kick the Dog: In season 8, Sergei Bazhaev shoots and kills his own son, who is suffering from radiation poisoning, so that his other son, Josef, will stop trying to treat him, despite the latter having already learned how to do so from a doctor, because of his paranoia that doing so will expose them.

In the first episode of Day 2, Jack murders Marshall Goren and chops off his head in order to infiltrate a terrorist cell. Considering that Goren was charged with eight counts of kidnapping a minor, two counts of child pornography, and first degree murder, it's hard to feel bad about it.

Jack throwing Margot Al-Harazi out the window to her death in Day 9.

Killed Mid-Sentence: Subverted in case of Renee Walker. She stopped talking not because she was dead, but because she was wounded to death.

Played straight with the interrogator of Dana Walsh. "You won't take the shot because ... " <headshot>

Long Bus Trip: Kate Warner, Chase Edmunds, Tom Lennox, Nadia, Driscoll... You know what, it's almost easier to list characters that didn't just up and leave without warning to never return...

Love Dodecahedron: Dana Walsh, who is engaged to Cole Ortiz, and being sniffed after by Arlo Glass, and being harrassed by Kevin Wade, a figure from her life who sure acts like they were lovers at one point.

Love Makes You Evil: Tony and eventually Jack both nearly caused the deaths of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of innocent people, all to avenge the death of a loved one.

Made of Iron: Jack Bauer shouldn't be able to walk by the halfway point of a typical season, and that's before you take sleep deprivation into account. By the time a season is over, it's not uncommon to have seen him bleed from the mouth, forehead, or arm at least once. Here's some of the worst ones. If this doesn't prove how much of a badass Bauer is, then nothing will:

Day 1: Grazing bullet wound to the gut. Overall, it's one of the more minor ones on this list. Also had to contend with Nina after this.

Day 2: Survives a plane crash in the first half of the season. Is later captured and literally tortured to death. He got better.

Day 5: Ribs cracked during his fight with assassin Hank. In the fifth episode.

Day 6: More torture (at the start of the season no less). Later on, Jack gets cracked ribs.

Day 7: Infected by a biological weapon. Quite possibly the worst one.

Day 8: Superficial knife wound early in the season. Serious stab wound in the final hours. Didn't seem too bad at first, but as Jack walks away from the wall he's leaning on, there is a very serious bloodstain on the wall. Shot in the season finale, and even survives a serious car wreck before the end.

During season three, both Nina Myers and Sherry proved to be the two biggest manipulative bitches in the series. Sherry had her key part to play in Alan's death, and Nina even managed to manipulate her interrogator.

Charles Logan in season 8 full stop. How else to describe someone who can convince the President to stand down Jack Bauer without even lying?

Men Are the Expendable Gender: Played straight. Even though there are some female deaths, they're generally meaningful, and the number of men killed off massively outnumber them; in spite of the fact that Jack killed 309 people over the course of the series, only five were female.

Meta Twist: At the end of season one, Nina is revealed to be the mole, and Jack's wife is killed. At the end of season two, President David Palmer has possibly just been assassinated. When the season three finale came along, everyone was expecting something big. What happens in the final moments? Jack breaks down crying. ...woah.

The last clock of the series.

Kim's arc. It looks like she's about to get kidnapped (again) by a crazy mountain man. Instead, he felt guilty about taking advantage of her and lets her go.

The endings of "Day Three: 9am - 10am" and "Day Five: 12am - 1am." Normally, episodes close out with a final split screen showing all the major characters, followed by one last meaningful scene (often involving some sort of twist). The aforementioned two episodes, however, end immediately after their final split screens.

Bill Buchanan's death. Most people saw it coming, even without the previews showing the explosion, but they never expected it to happen within the first ten minutes of the episode.

Mexican Standoff: The end of one episode of Season 7 sees the FBI aiming guns at an army of private mercenaries.

Midair Collision: It wasn't shown on screen, but it was invoked by terrorists, using a MacGuffin to crash two planes together.

Season 3: The events of the first 7 hours is part of an elaborate sting operation.

Season 4: Tony Almeida returns.

Season 6: Phillip Bauer is involved in the terrorist plot.

Season 9: Steve Navarro is revealed to have framed Adam Morgan for selling secrets to the Chinese.

A Million Is a Statistic: Averted. In Season 6, a suitcase nuke detonates, killing over 12,000 people, and it's horrifying, despite occurring immediately after the death of Curtis Manning. It's regularly referenced for the rest of the season, and the number of casualties keeps increasing.

The Mole: At least three per season. The number of people in the US government, and especially CTU, who are actually working for terrorists/foreign powers is appalling.

In Season 7, the FBI is found to be riddled with them.

Back in full force in Season 8, though. Earlier on, Jack Bauer and the rest of the cast confront and arrest conspirators because they disobeyed presidential orders, even though they had a very good reason to do so; this is portrayed as a heinous crime that Jack frowns upon. Later, he does the same damn thing a few episodes later.

Season 9 reveals that the CIA is not immune to the phenomenon.

Morality Chain: Renee's death seems to have been one morality chain too far for Jack.

In Day 5, Vladimir Bierko goes from trying to force the Russians out of his homeland to trying to kill as many American civilians as he can.

In Day 8, Samir Mehran apparently does the same as Bierko when his plan to smuggle nuclear rods into the IRK fails. However, this is subverted when Samir's true plan is revealed: extorting Taylor into handing over Omar Hassan.

The Movie: Put on hold because the TV series kept happening. Was announced to go into production in early 2012, but then was delayed due to concerns about script and budget. Little is known about it, other than that the real-time format will not be used, with the movie instead depicting the events of a full day in an approximately two hour period. Additionally, it may be the first in a planned trilogy.

Murder.com: During Season 4, the terrorists attempt this on James Heller, but Jack rescues him.

Mutual Kill: In Season 9, Jordan Reed manages to put a few bullets into his assassin before bleeding out.

My Girl Is Not a Slut: Discussed at the beginning of the fifth season. Chloe has a one-night stand with a man (which her dialogue seems to indicate is the first time she's ever done such a thing), and becomes paranoid that people may start to think she's been sleeping around.

Myth Arc: 1-3, 4-6, and Redemption 'til the end each make a loosely connected story through the seasons.

Season 7 attempts to bookend the conspiracy plots of Seasons 5 and 6 with its establishment of Alan Wilson as the man who implemented the deaths of David Palmer and Michelle.

Nice job disobeying orders and following Jack to Mexico so you can break the tracking device in his watch, Chase.

From the same season, nice job going into the hotel despite specific orders not to do so and not only failing to save the guests and staff at the hotel from the Cordilla virus, but also getting your own team killed as well, Michelle.

Nice job ordering Renee's murder, Suvarov. You were about to get away with everything until you decided to piss Jack Bauer off.

Nice job putting Jack into a position where he has to go into hiding rather than being taken prisoner and is thus free to later thwart the Sentox Gas conspiracy, Mr. Cummings.

Well done telling Jack that Kim had died so that he could kill the Drazens in a rage, thus exposing your guilt when he found out about the lie, Nina. If you had said nothing, Jack might've died in the final assault, or at the very least would have been none the wiser to your complicity. Not to mention it probably would have kept you from killing his wife, thus leading Jack to later fill you with lead years later in revenge.

Nice job blackmailing Boudreau, Stolnavich. You just gave Jack access to someone with all the information necessary to bring you down when you were inevitably implicated in the terrorist plot.

Nice job trying to murder your son, Navi Araz. Now both he and your wife have turned against you and agreed to help Jack stop the meltdowns.

No Bisexuals: Averted; one of the minor villains in the first season has a female lover, and has a male lover in the fourth. Unusual for both the few bisexuals on television and anyone on this show, she ends up getting away in the first and second seasons, and not only being taken alive in the fourth, but being granted immunity.

Nobody Poops: Lip service is paid to averting this in the early seasons, with scattered occasional references to characters needing to use the bathroom. Along with the narrative requirement that the events of the season take place in a particular 24-hour period, it's gone in later years.

Dirty agents and agents wishing to work unseen often use toilet stalls for privacy, even in later seasons. The bathrooms are populated in those scenes by background characters who have (presumably) just used the facilities.

No Party Given: David Palmer is explicitly identified as a Democrat in the first season. No other politicians are given explicit party identification, but these can be easily deduced from the known fact of Palmer's affiliation. The presidential administrations tend to include more prominent examples of hawkish Democrats and dovish Republicans than one would expect in Real Life.

Inverted on Day 6. An Arabic civilian is denied access on a bus because the driver thought he was a terrorist (since the country had been bombed repeatedly by Muslim terrorists). About a minute later, a suicide bomber blows up the very same bus the civilian did not get on.

Not Named in Opening Credits: Dennis Hopper in season one, Sarah Clarke in season two and three - any time they want a surprise appearance, really.

A bizarre case is during the first half of the 2-Hour Finale to Season Six, where James Morrison is uncredited after being written out a few episodes earlier, but appears before the episode's credits even begin rolling.

In a non-surprise appearance example, Harris Yulin was uncredited throughout all of Season 2, as he personally wanted his name to be credited on its own and not share the space with any other actor's name. When this was denied for him, he then asked to not receive any credit for his appearances.

William Devane does not appear in the opening credits of Live Another Day9x09 because the previous episode's cliffhanger showed him (supposedly) being blown to bits at Wembley Stadium. His name is the first to appear in the closing credits, though.

Averted in episode 10 of Live Another Day with Tzi Ma - his name is listed in the opening credits, albeit after the usual cast so it's possible that viewers (including this troper's whole family) missed it.

Jack is kind of a magnet for these given his tendency to break the rules. Season 7 has two; first an organization that hires disaffected soldiers as mercs, then Hodges, who tries to say that both he and Jack are being punished by the government for serving their country.

Season 8 throws a couple of these too. A disillusioned Cole states that Jack and Pillar are nothing but the same, and even Pillar later tells Jack that he's as much a murderer as the ones he goes after.

Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Jack killing Mikhail Novakovich, along with most of Novakovich's guards, in Day 8. Only the bloody aftermath is shown.

Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: A handful of characters can be this, what with how, in the world of 24, terrorists operating in the states can seemingly replenish/replace resources (manpower, money, privacy and weaponry) on a whim; but the man who takes the cake for this trope is Day 4's Habib Marwan. Marwan is constantly changing terror plots and escaping arrests/raids (he's the only character who's really a baddie for the whole season) — because of this, it seems that any moment Marwan is off-screen, he's having a really easy time securing more resources. And he's Crazy-Prepared like hell, too.

Before the day's events take place, Jack and Chloe were both in London for different reasons (the former working for Karl Rask, the latter working with Open Cell). Even better, the two only meet up because Chloe happens to be affiliated with one of the season's minor villains.

The President is James Heller, who's in London with his daughter Audrey. True, Jack only involves himself in the story because Heller is President, but it's still a big coincidence that Jack, Chloe, and Heller/Audrey are all in London under different circumstances.

Another possible example is the business relationship between Karl Rask and Margot Al-Harazi; given that Jack didn't learn of Margot's involvement until the season's third episode, this association between his boss and the Big Bad seems very coincidental. A feasible explanation is that Jack was able to discover the terrorist threat because of his work with Rask, but if so, it's never stated.

Steve Navarro and Adrian Cross are in cahoots.

Cheng Zhi shows up as the season's final Big Bad, and later turns out to be working with Anatol Stolnavich, who also happens to be involved in the subplot regarding Jack's extradition to Russia.

One Last Smoke: Played with in series 3, when terrorist Stephen Saunders demands that Ryan Chappelle be killed or he will release his weaponised virus. Chappelle tries to sneak out of the CTU building, claiming it's to smoke a cigarette. He even shows Jack his pack as evidence. Later though, just before Jack is forced to actually kill him, he admits that it was an attempt to run away.

Opening Narration: The majority of episodes in Season 1 began with Jack narrating the premise and ending with him saying "this is the longest day of my life".

Our Presidents Are Different: David Palmer was the first black President on a major TV programme. Some political commentators claimed after the 2008 election that Palmer's strong character (as written by Republicans, no less!) made a certain man from Hawai'i more acceptable and resulted in his election. Similarly, President Allison Taylor, portrayed by Cherry Jones, is the first female President of the United States.

Pet the Dog: Strangely enough, Sergei Bazhaev gets one after his Kick the Dog moment; after shooting his younger son, who was dying of radiation poisoning, Sergei calls in a priest and asks him to perform quick funeral rites and then have him buried "out back" instead of at a cemetery. When the priest protests, saying it's "not right", Sergei remains adamant on the point, and says, "You just make it right. Say all the prayers. Where I end up, I don't care. But this boy is with the angels."

Plot Armor: Kim Bauer and leaders of real countries can never be killed. The latter can however suffer grievous injuries which they may or may not recover from.

Police Are Useless: The show often emphasizes how ordinary police officers and even the guards at CTU itself are not immune to being overpowered by external/internal enemies.

Several times have SWAT Teams been outdone or escaped (examples of characters who have accomplished this are Stephen Saunders, Arthur Rabens, Abu Fayed, Marwan repeatedly — and even Michael Amador who slaughtered via ambush an entire Delta Foce team.

It's rather common in the series that security guards in the the CTU building are easily bypassed. Jack in Season Two when taking Kate to Wallace, Tony taking Jane to Stephen in Season Three and even the treason-convicted Nina Myers being able to almost escape the building (only stopped by Jack) during Seasons 1 and 3

Police officers are often making the jobs of the protagonists harder due to misunderstandings.

Police Brutality: Jack ends up on the receiving end when mistaken for a cop killer.

The Secret Service agent who had to be swiftly tricked into believing he killed Jack in Season 4.

The Power of Friendship: Believe it or not, this is what ultimately turns Jack Bauer back from the dark side in the day 8 finale and prevents him from assassinating the Russian president, Yuri Suvarov. When Chloe O'Brian comes for him to try to talk him down, he asks her why she came and she replies that she had to, as she's his friend.

Pragmatic Villainy: Charles Logan scolded both Christopher Henderson for killing David Palmer and later Suvarov for killing Renee Walker, since both of these actions led to Jack Bauer thwarting Logan's plans .

Charles Logan does this in Day 5 and seemingly does a Heel–Face Turn in Day 6. However, once Day 8 rolls around, it becomes obvious that it was a ploy to get his pardon, as he is back to his old tricks.

Allison Taylor started to go down this route in Day 8 before she had her What Have I Done moment near the end and resigns. Of course, Logan had a hand in this.

Russian President Yuri Suvarov is revealed to be behind the murders of President Hassan and Renee Walker. This may lead to debate on if he was actually involved in the events of Day 5 and 6 as well, since those seasons had Russian terrorists. It should also come as no surprise that the man is also a good friend of Logan.

They weren't Russians; they were Russian separatists. And their entire plan was to assassinate him, and when that failed, terrorise the United States into letting them assassinate him. So it's rather unlikely he was behind them, given that this would mean he was masterminding his own murder.

Previously On: Almost every episode starts with one, due to the show's extremely serialized nature.

Product Placement: What phone Jack uses, what car he drives, and even the laptop he has is usually determined by whoever paid the most money that season.

Put on a Bus to Hell: Chase Edmunds; he gets his hand cut off, and when Kim shows up in Season 5, it's heavily implied he turned into a bit of a Jerkass not long after Jack's faked death caused them to split up. Chase was also last mentioned as living in Valencia, which got nuked in Season 6, so he possibly got a Bus Crash on top of all that.

Put Them All Out of My Misery: At the end of season 9, Jack of all people gets such a moment. Upon learning about Audrey's death, Jack shuts down in a fit of abject misery for a moment, during which he is nearly Driven to Suicide, getting as far as taking his gun into his hand with the clear intention of using it on himself. But in the middle of this, his sorrow gradually gives way to intense, white-hot anger, and instead of shooting himself, he instead performs a Blast Out, managing to gun down every single one of Cheng's bodyguards in his blind fury, before he punctuates the blood bath by decapitating Cheng himself with a sword.

Pyrrhic Victory: Are there any victories on this show that don't have some element of this? But special mention should go to Day 3, because it's the plan set in motion by Jack, Tony, and Agent Gael Ortega that exacts a terrible price from each of them before they accomplish what they set out to do. It's kind of the point of the series, if you think about it.

Season One: The most famous example, which defined Jack Bauer and the series from that point on. Jack saved President Palmer and rescued his daughter from Victor Drazen and his henchmen, but at the cost of his wife.

Season Two: An aversion on Jack's part, since he was able to reconcile with his daughter by the season's end. Though this trope applies to George Mason, Kate Warner, and David Palmer. Their combined help prevented the nuke attack, but Mason eventually succumbed to exposure from radiation poisoning he received in hour 3 (but at least he redeemed himself by flying the nuke away from L.A.), Kate Warner found out that her sister Marie killed her fiance and collaborated with the terrorists, and Palmer nearly died by a nerve agent, courtesy of Mandy.

Season Three: As stated above, Jack, Gael, and Tony Almeida all worked together in an undercover mission with the Salazars to prevent the Cordilla virus from being released to the general population. The gambit doesn't entirely work, since the virus struck an L.A. plaza, and killed Gael in the process. Tony committed treason to save his wife Michelle from Saunders. Saunders was eventually captured, but Tony faces a possible 20-year sentence for collaborating with him. As for Jack... despite the mission ultimately succeeding, he was brought to tears for everything he did that day, which included being responsible for the deaths of some prison guards during the jail breakout, Claudia's death, and most shockingly, submitting to Saunders's demands and shooting his boss in the head to buy CTU time to apprehend Saunders.

Season Four: Jack prevented Marwan's plans from coming to fruition, but in the process, he captured a Chinese national with information about Marwan. This wound up killing one Chinese representative in friendly fire, Jack let Audrey's ex-husband Paul die on an operating table to save the aforementioned national, who also got wounded, and the resulting operation forced Jack to fake his death and flee the country. The worst part is that this could have been prevented if Charles Logan let Jack go through with the original, though illegal, operation to capture Marwan the first time. All the more ironic, considering what happened next season.

Season Five: Congratulations Jack! You saved L.A. from another nerve gas attack and exposed President Logan as the traitorous bastard he really is! Too bad your daughter hates you again, David Palmer, Michelle Dessler, and Tony Almeida are all dead, your old mentor tried to kill you, and the Chinese captured you as payback for your season four misdeeds.

Season Six: Jack stopped both Fayed's and the Chinese's plans, but his brother and father both died, trying to kill him, and despite getting Audrey back, she became catatonic from getting tortured by the Chinese. The fact that Audrey's father, Secretary Heller, gave Jack a "The Reason You Suck" Speech when Audrey lost her mind didn't help at all. No wonder Jack was pissed at him by day's end.

24: Redemption: Jack was able to save a group of high-risk children from Songalian terrorists (read: Africans), but his old army buddy Carl Benton sacrificed himself and Jack ended up having to be brought to trial for his actions throughout the series.

Season Seven: This applies more to Tony than Jack when it comes to stopping the terrorists. Tony at least managed to get Alan Wilson to appear, but his plan to kill Alan Wilson failed. This wouldn't be so bad if Tony didn't betray the FBI in the process by killing the D.C.'s FBI department's boss, set up an explosive death trap for an entire S.W.A.T. team, and try to kill both Alan Wilson AND Jack by strapping a bomb to Jack's body. Moral Event Horizon to the extreme, and it would've been all for nothing, had the FBI not apprehended Alan Wilson. Jack, on the other hand, fared much better. Despite getting infected by a nerve agent that put him into a coma and nearly killed him, Jack reconciled with his daughter, and was more or less able to move past his many sins, thanks to an Islamic mosque leader. If it wasn't for season eight, Jack would've been completely at peace for what he's done.

Season Eight: The grand daddy of Jack Bauer Pyrrhic Victories. Jack loses Renee to a Russian sniper, he crossed many moral and personal boundaries to prove President Taylor's covering up the Russian involvement of Omar Hassan's death, and because of that, he can't contact Kim or his granddaughter again because he's on the run from both Russia AND the United States. Furthermore, the peace treaty never got signed, and even if it did, the signing would've caused never-ending animosity between the United States and Kamistan (24's Pakistan Expy). No matter what Jack did, this ensured the terrorists' victory. Along with that, Suvarov got away with everything he did, despite his followers winding up dead. It's almost a misnomerto call this a victory.

Season Nine (Live Another Day): On the bright side, Jack prevented China and the U.S. from going to war. On the down side... oh boy, where to start? Audrey is dead, Heller's Alzheimer's Disease is getting worse due to the stress of his daughter's death and he grimly notes that soon he'll forget he even had a daughter, and Mark is facing life imprisonment for his actions and is shattered upon discovering that everything he did in his misguided attempt to protect his wife has now all been for nothing. Kate blames herself for failing to keep Audrey alive and resigns from the CIA. Jack, worn out and exhausted after everything that's happened willingly turns himself in to the Russian Government in exchange for Chloe, who now has to deal with survivors guilt what with Jack sacrificing himself for her, and need we remind you her family is still dead so she doesn't really have anything left back home to go back to. And if we're counting main characters who were removed from play right before the finale, both Adrian and Jordan are also dead and Navarro is facing execution for being a traitor. The only one who doesn't end up in a worse position than when things started is Erik Ritter.

Qurac: The Islamic Republic of Kamistan in day 8. Previous Middle Eastern terrorists simply didn't have their country of origin revealed.

Rabid Cop: Jack Bauer, although he is - all together now — "A FEDERAL AGENT!".

Race Against the Clock: The entire show's premise and the sense of urgency that moves the drama is about this trope. It's also used as a moral justification for protagonist-done torture.

Random Events Plot: Season 4. Oh, dear God, season 4. Try to keep up: The terrorists derail a train to steal a briefcase, then abduct the Secretary of Defense and plan to execute him live on the internet, but it's really a Trojan Horse to get viral programming code to spread across the web and use the mysterious briefcase to override every nuclear power plant in the US and cause them to melt down. Once that's averted, it's revealed the defense contractor that built the Override may be complicit in the day's events and hire mercenaries to kill Jack Bauer, who's investigating them. So far, fairly coherent. Then things go awry. The defense contractor subplot is dropped as quickly as it's introduced in favor of a series of increasingly ludicrousand convoluted terror attacks. It turns out the nuclear power plant meltdowns were just to keep Air Force 1 in the air so a mercenary can steal a jet fighter and shoot it down. Not content with murdering the leader of the free world, that turns out to be a play for recovering the nuclear football from the crash site, which terrorist leader Habib Marwan then uses to locate a nuclear warhead in transit in the mountains of Iowa, which he then installs in a missile assembled in someone's garage, and then uses to try and nuke Los Angeles. Which would have happened anyway if he'd succeeded in melting down every nuclear power plant. And all the while, Marwan evades capture from CTU no less than four times. And this plot isn't even the focus! Mostly it's happening in the background while CTU bickers like children and are preoccupied with out-of-nowhere subplots like the legal crisis over mercenary Joe Prado, the sudden return of recurring baddie Mandy, or Jack Bauer's raid on the Chinese Consulate. Whew. Are you exhausted yet?

Rasputinian Death: Janet York. She gets drugged, has her arm broken, gets drugged again, gets run over by a car, and is carelessly left in the middle of the street for at least a half-hour before an ambulance finally arrives. And when she's in surgery, she nearly flatlines. It isn't until a man impersonating her father mercilessly suffocates her in her hospital bed that she finally dies.

Rats in a Box: In season 2, CTU agents put Bob Warner and Reza Nayieer in a room together in order to determine who transferred the funds to Syed Ali. Reza cracks and offers to show the CTU agents how the funds were transferred, but they find out that Reza's fiancé Marie — the last person CTU or the audience would suspect — transferred the funds, and she kills Reza and the agents investigating the funds.

The first few episodes of Season 1 and the first episode of Season 2 outright state that "events occur in Real Time."

Reasonable Authority Figure: David Palmer, Wayne Palmer, George Mason (eventually), Bill Buchanan, Karen Hayes, Allison Taylor, Omar Hassan, and Brian Hastings... after a few verbal bitch-slaps from Chloe. Larry was well on his way to this when he was killed, and even early on was somewhat more sympathetic than many CTU/FBI Directors of past seasons.

Strangely enough, many of the terrorist masterminds in the show are also this. Instead of executing their subordinates at the first sign of protesting against their actions, most terrorist leaders stop to think things through when their subordinates remind them of the bigger picture. Abu Fayed decides not to hunt down Jack Bauer in revenge for killing his brother when his subordinate reminds him that they have plans beyond just a single man, and Samir Mehran doesn't try to boost his ego when his subordinate informs them that Omar Hassan isn't going to break under torture to deliver a falsified confession as they wanted, and simply decides to execute him. Ivan Erwich does come close to killing one of his subordinates for speaking out, but he did have a very good point.

In "Day Three: 8am - 9am", Stephen Saunders sends henchmen after an undisclosed female target; shortly afterward, the car carrying Kim Bauer and Jane Saunders is followed by an extremely suspicious biker. As it turns out, the biker is innocent, and Saunders' target is Michelle Dessler.

During Day 5, the audience is led to suspect Charles Logan's vice president Hal Gardner as the corrupt government official behind the Sentox conspiracy. It actually turns out to be Logan himself.

Red Herring Twist: Season 2 ends with an assassination attempt on David Palmer, who falls to the ground in grave health. However, the resolution to this is never shown note except in 24: The Game for PlayStation 2, and Season 3 takes place three years later with a rejuvenated Palmer and a completely new plot.

Redemption Equals Death: There are some terrorists who are convinced that what they're doing (or did) was wrong and try to help Jack or CTU to make up for it (or do it to get immunity). It usually doesn't end well, especially with Dina Araz.

Along with terrorists are the Jerkasses who manage to make up for their actions, the most heroic of cases being Ryan Chappelle.

Jack just barely manages to avert the latter part of this trope in the series finale. After coming back to his senses, he realizes that the masterminds behind the Hassan murder coverup will arrest Chloe if they know they're consorting together, so he forces her to shoot him and allows himself to be taken into custody, even though it's clear they'll eliminate him immediately. Fortunately, Allison Taylor managed to have a change of heart, and working with Chloe, Cole, and Arlo, save him just seconds before he's executed.

Red Shirt: As stated on the page for this trope, "Any CTU field agent who isn't Jack Bauer or the season's Colonel Makepeace is a red shirt."

The security guards literally wear red shirts.

Civilians who are forced either by the villains or Jack Bauer to cooperate with them are EXTREMELY likely not to live for long. If either of those gives anyone their word, that person's dead.

Red Shirt Army: If Jack ever receives any sort of SWAT team or Special Forces back up, you can expect them to bite it before the next commercial break. It's almost a Running Gag how many times Secret Service details are wiped out without causing so much as a single casualty to their attacker.

The show seems to keep changing its mind as to who was responsible for the deaths of David Palmer and Michelle Dessler. In Season 5, Christopher Henderson claims responsibility. Then in Season 6, Graem Bauer claims it was his idea (though he may have been making it up to unsettle Jack). And in Season 7, it suddenly becomes Alan Wilson who was responsible for the deaths.

Technically, Christopher Henderson was The Dragon to Charles Logan and his co-conspirators, playing a role in organizing David Palmer's and Michelle Dessler's deaths. A sniper named Haas was the one who shot Palmer; it is unknown who planted the car bomb that killed Michelle. Logan worked with Graem, as shown in Seasons 5 and 6, and it is implied he is working with others with a lot of power. This is then shown in Redemption and Season 7, with Private Military Companies being involved, and finally, Alan Wilson being revealed as one of the leaders of the overall conspiracy. Almost all the characters involved have various reasons for their involvement. If you watch Seasons 5 and 6, as well as Redemption and Season 7, and treat it as a Story Arc, you can see this (convoluted) plot play out. Additionally, Season 4 can be seen as having prequel elements to this whole Story Arc, since the events of Season 4 lead to Logan coming into power, allowing the whole arc to play out.

Retired Badass: Jack, at the beginning of Day 8. Of course, this being 24, he soon gets pulled back in.

Season 4 attempted this by redesigning CTU and dismissing every previous main cast member except for Jack note Chloe O'Brian and President John Keeler also returned, but they were only recurring characters at the time. However, a large number of popular characters returned as guest stars later in the season.

Season 7 broke tradition by taking place in Washington DC instead of Los Angeles, and by replacing CTU's role with the FBI (CTU having been dismantled after a government probe into torture committed by Jack and others).

In Season 1, the Drazens carry this out against Jack and Palmer, because they were responsible for killing their family. And then, in the finale, Jack does it against them after being lied to about how they killed his family. Guess who wins.

Tony's whole motivation in season 7.

Jack's back at it again in Day 8 after Renee's death.

Jack goes at it again after Audrey's death in Day 9, slaughtering Cheng Zhi's men and then decapitating Cheng.

Rule of Three: The series' first three seasons were set up as loosely connected acts with a Myth Arc (mostly around the character of Nina and her relation to Jack). Seasons 4 through 6 also have a myth arc of powerful men pulling strings inside the US Government (some of which return in season 7) and Jack's conflicts with the Chinese Government. Redemption, 7, and 8 deal with the Presidency of Allison Taylor. Three myth arcs of three. Each Season also has 3 acts, which change according to who the villains are, what their plan is, and what CTU's investigation is.

Throughout all 8 seasons, there were in total three moments where a character who was a part of the current main cast was killed by a character that was also another current member of the main cast. These notably tied in with either the revelation that their murderer was really Evil All Along or that s/he was undergoing a Face–Heel Turn.

Season 5: Exaggerated. David Palmer and Michelle Dessler are both killed in the first episode before the first commercial break. Later on, Edgar Stiles, Lynn McGill, and Tony Almeida get killed (although Tony came Back from the Dead).

Season 6: Curtis Manning, Hamri Al-Assad, and Milo Pressman.

Redemption: Carl Benton.

Season 7: Bill Buchanan and Larry Moss.

Season 8: President Omar Hassan and Renee Walker, with Dana Walsh in a rare villainous case.

Season 9: Jordan Reed and Audrey Boudreau.

Sadistic Choice: In season 3, Jack was forced by convicts to play Russian Roulette. Play a deadly game or die.

Save the Villain: Played with in several seasons, but almost never done straight, since it's usually for pragmatic reasons instead of idealistic ones. Examples include Habib Marwan in Day 4 and Simone Al-Harazi in Day 9.

Sergei Bazhaev mercy kills his son who was dying of radiation poisoning. He eventually gets arrested, loses the nuclear fuel rods and his other soon dies.

A young CTU agent named Owen runs out into the middle of a firefight to rescue a wounded CTU agent. As he dragged the man back to safety, both of them are shot. Fatally. Which sucks, because Owen wouldn't have sacrificed himself if the other agent wasn't stupid. However, Jack lies to Owen and says he saved him, so at least he died believing he performed a Heroic Sacrifice.

A covert operation to kidnap President Hassan and deliver him to the terrorists to prevent the detonation of a dirty bomb results in massive casualties. He gives himself up to the remaining kidnapper. The two men who concocted this scheme are shocked to believe Hassan would have given up willingly if they just asked.

Hassan's death was for nothing as it turns out the peace treaty he was trying to sign was built on a lie and his own widow turns his country against the West again.

Shoot the Shaggy Dog: some storylines end in a very depressing note. Of particular interest are: saving Teri Bauer in Day 1 (and Kim Bauer surviving instead made the situation worse for some fans); saving Ryan Chappelle in Day 3; and saving President Omar Hassan in Day 8.

And in Day 8, literally one hour AFTER what was mentioned in the spoiler above, Renee gets killed by a sniper bullet, after screwing Jack Bauer.

Day 5 set about making sure that Tony's entire character arc in Day 4 was ultimately a moot point.

In the finale of Day 9, Kate saves Audrey from a sniper, only for her to be hit by a second gunman minutes later, and a pardoned Jack ends up surrendering himself to the Russians to save Chloe.

Shout-Out: As mentioned before, we've got Star Trek alumni on the production staff now. In season 7, two suggestions to replace departing members of Taylor's administration were Rick Berman and Bob Justman, who were also longtime Trek staff.

In an episode of Season 1, Milo gives his computer password as "foothill94022", a reference to a community college where Michael Loceff, the episode's writer, teaches online classes.

Jack breaking out a pair of pliers and a blowtorch to use on Pavel seemed to be a reference to Pulp Fiction.

In a reverse shout-out, the Department of Homeland Security launched a surveillance technology development program aimed at protecting airliners from terrorist missiles. It's called "Project CHLOE", because the then-Director of DHS is a fan of 24.

Silent Credits: the famous beeping clock at the end of an episode (and twice before an Act Break) is silenced for scenes of emotional impact where the clock would ruin it, and ambient noise plays instead (for example, for Ryan Chappelle's death, a train in the background). Only one instance (Edgar's death) has had the credits completely silent. May also be the Trope Codifier.

Slap-Slap-Kiss: Averted with Renee and Jack. After she slaps him twice, she breaks down crying in his arms. Word of God is that originally they were going to kiss, but it never came out right; and was ultimately dismissed as being too clichéd.

Smug Snake: Many, many villains on this show, but Nina Myers is one of the best. Her actions after her reveal up until her final episode make her a great enemy of CTU. All the more satisfying when Jack wipes that smug look off her face.

Soft Glass: Averted and played straight throughout the series. In Season 1, Jack picks up a blunt object off the ground in order to break a van's window and strikes it. It isn't until the third strike that the window breaks. Yet in Season 7, Jack manages to jump through the glass frame of a door and receive only a small gash on his hand.

Spoiler Opening: Usually averted when a former cast member is going to make a surprise return, but the season five opener had Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida) returning to the main cast and Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle Dessler) still listed as a guest star. Seeing as how at the end of season four, Tony and Michelle had left CTU to settle down and start a family, seeing only one of them returning to the main cast is a big hint that Michelle doesn't survive the episode. The irony is that Carlos Bernard only appears in six of the 24 episodes in the season and is only awake in four of them (at one point, Jack is falsely told that Tony has woken up, leading to an appearance, and then he appears as a corpse in the episode immediately after he dies), so the return to the main cast is actually rather unwarranted.

Also done in the case of the second season: Penny Johnson Jerald (Sherry Palmer) had been missing from several episodes and then returned late in the season during one episode as a surprise cliffhanger. The only problem was that she'd been listed during the opening credits, thus ruining the surprise. Notably, a few other rare times, the series would intentionally omit a main cast member to avert this trope.

Season six is guilty of this as well with Cheng Zhi (Tzi Ma) and Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell) having last-minute "surprise" reappearances in two respective episodes, both of which are ruined by listing the actors during the opening credits. In an interesting aversion of the trope, the season's 23rd episode omits James Morrison from the opening credits, despite Bill's return happening before the first commercial break.

Live Another Day also has Tzi Ma's name credited at the beginning of its tenth episode, ruining Cheng Zhi's surprise reappearance as the Big Bad over half an hour before he actually shows up.

Stairs Are Faster: Jack Bauer proves this trope when he outruns Ted Cofell's elevator, beating him to his limo. Justified since Jack bought himself time by pulling the fire alarm, stopping the elevator for about half a minute.

Joseph Wald in Season 2. CTU spends the first few episodes hunting him down while he orchestrates an attack on their headquarters.

Conrad Haas only appears in the first episode of Season 5, but during that episode, he manages to assassinate David Palmer and frame Jack Bauer, among other heinous acts.

Davros, who spends the first few episodes of Season 8 slowly carrying out his plot to assassinate Omar Hassan.

Static Character: In Season 8, Arlo Glass seems to fit this trope. Throughout the entire season, we hardly get to know him, and his interaction in the plot hardly ever exceeds analyzing the monitors at CTU. Despite this, he appeared in EVERY EPISODE of the season, the only character to do so besides Jack (The Hero), Cole (the Big Guy/Lancer), and Chloe (The Smart Guy and Jack's True Companion).

Stealth Pun: In euchre, the trump jack (considered the highest trump) and the jack of the same color (considered the second highest trump) are called bowers.

Stranger Behind the Mask: Starting around season five, the show set up a huge conspiracy with who was behind the events that carried over for that day, and partly leaked over to season six as well. Come the second half (and especially the last third) of season seven, the conspiracy is played out once again, and assumed to be reaching its endgame, come the season seven finale. Finally, the viewers watch rogue agent Tony Almeida get to The Man Behind the Man, and made some rather nasty decisions to reach him. So when we see the guy, it's... Alan Wilson, someone the viewers never spotted at any point or have any connection to, whatsoever. What made this twist even more jarring is that during this very season, the writers introduced Jonas Hodges, a much more engaging and charismatic villain who could've been a worthy choice to be the conspiracy leader. But instead, we have this.

Story Arc: Each season is essentially one complex story, with strings of episodes comprising what the 24 Wikia (on each season's page) likes to call "acts". Most seasons have two acts, some have three or four. For instance (it'd be a lot of space to list them all); Season 2 is split into two acts. The first act is about the CTU trying to find and search for the nuke, while the second act is about Jack trying to expose the forged evidence before the US strikes three innocent countries.

There are also elements in each season that affect the following seasons.

Subverted many times, though, especially in Season 5 with Anton Beresch's men; the only casualties are the terrorists themselves. Also see Land Mine Goes "Click!".

Unfortunately, this was subverted again, because one of the Mooks survived the mine explosion and later wound up becoming The Dragon during Season 7.

Jack attempts this once in both seasons 6 and 7. In season 6, he attempts to make a trade with Cheng Zhi in a room that he's secretly rigged with explosives and plans on activating as soon as the trade is finished even though it would kill the both of them, but the arrival of a CTU team ruins this and allows Cheng to escape. In season 7, after Juma takes the White House hostage, Jack attempts to ignite a gas tank that will kill some of the soldiers as well in addition to being enough of a distraction to make Juma drop his guard. Bill winds up doing this instead.

"I didn't think the president had the balls to go through with the agreement."

The quote "Today is going to be the longest day of my life" originates from Jack's introduction of the show's first season. Seven seasons later...

Ten Little Murder Victims: done at a nation-wide scale during Season 7 to apprehend all the members of Juma's conspiracy, who had infiltrated pretty much every level of government administration and the Congress.

That's an Order!: Jack to NYPD Sergeant Amis in Season 8. Amis didn't listen and got killed along with his team.

In the second season, it was determined that a suspect was lying because she claimed that she saw one of these with a big visible timer in a truck in the city, and a real bomb of that particular size would never look like that. The real bomb turns out to be very close by.

"I appreciate the offer, Kevin, but as you Americans so often say... Plan B is already in effect."

Time Skip: The conceit of each season of the series representing one full 24-hour day would necessitate a Time Skip of about a year each time. It's actually quite a bit more, with season 1 covering David Palmer's election as president and 24: Redemption, the made-for-TV movie preceding season 7, taking place on inauguration day when Allison Taylor takes office... twelve years later. A timeline of the presidency can be found here; a full timeline can be found here.

Too Dumb to Live: So, so, so many secondary characters. Most of them last about two or three episodes before effectively committing suicide by stupidity.

An especially glaring example is Consul Koo Yin. If there's anything to be learned from his untimely passing, it's probably that you shouldn't stroll in front of a bunch of guards who are busy shooting at something.

Almost any time Jack teams up with a random mook or civilian, that person will instantly jump up several levels in badass, as if it's caused by sheer physical proximity. For example, on Day 4, attorney Paul Raines and two teenage store clerks, under Jack's command, manage to hold off an elite, well-trained, and far better-armed commando unit.

Henry Taylor single-handedly not only found out his son truly didn't kill himself, but who his murderer was. Even after he was poisoned with a drug that paralyzed him from the neck down, he managed to fight off the toxin and strangle his son's killer to death with his bare hands.

Finallysubverted in season 8, where Jack spends the entire final act of the episode torturing an agent, only to realize that the agent Took A Third Option which will require a different response.

Even more notable is how the torture here is far more brutal than usual, even by Jack's standards, and yet the guy doesn't break.

The actual aversion is when Jack is tortured for years by the Chinese without giving them anything for their trouble.

It did get subverted as far back as Day 4, however — two innocent people (Agent Sarah Gavin and Heller's son) were tortured needlessly because they were either wrongly accused or truly had no idea what was going on. In both cases, actual physical evidence ended up saving the day.

Actually three — Jack tortured one Paul Raines because he wrongly suspected that he was working with the terrorists (he actually did help them, but he had no idea they were terrorists and was innocent of any actual wrongdoing; all he did was sign a lease on a building for what he thought was a legitimate business). Which was pretty bad for Jack, given Paul was the ex-husband of his then-girlfriend Audrey Raines and Jack tortured him right in front of her, putting a pretty serious dent in his and Audrey's relationship in the process.

Ditto for Audrey Raines in Day 5, only there wasn't any physical evidence this time.

Averted in Live Another Day. CIA officer Kate Morgan, undercover as a CIA officer with a different mission, immediately spills everything about the fake mission while hiding what they're really up to. Other characters have been tortured without admitting anything. The only time torture achieves something, Naveed's wife is tortured to force him to comply with the terrorists' demands.

Tuckerization: The creators of the show held an eBay auction for fans who wanted their name in the show. The winner's name was given to Lou Diamond Phillips' prison-warden character. Who, of course, was killed. Bet the fan loved seeing that.

What's further tragic about Season 6 (or amusing, depending on how you look at it), is that Noah Daniels takes over for Wayne Palmer and apparently holds office for the rest of his term, when it's established that Palmer had only been President for roughly three or four months. This means that Daniels essentially served an entire term as a replacement President.

And again in Live Another Day with Heller's resignation due to his Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Though the show's production team have never given out an official timeline (in an attempt to maintain a consistent "present-day" sense with each season), it's commonly-accepted Fanon that the entire series spans from 2002 to 2016. Given that the series ran from 2001 to 2010, this trope actually does apply.

Day 3 has the virus being released at the hotel, and later Ryan Chappelle being executed.

In Day 8, Samir Mehran follows through on his plan to assassinate Omar Hassan.

Double subverted in Live Another Day: James Heller decides to surrender himself and let Margot Al-Harazi kill him, and that's exactly what happens...until the very next episode reveals he was able to fake his death at the last minute.

Jack goes on one at the end of season one when Nina lies to him about Kim dying.

And again in season 8 after Renee's death, resulting in him taking on Implacable Man status.

Unwanted Harem: Dana Walsh, in a gender-flip of the trope: not only a fiancé, but an ex-boyfriend bugging her and a coworker sniffing around her heels. (Of course, she isStarbuck, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.)

Villain Decay: In Season 5, we find out that Mr. Bluetooth and a small organization of men are really behind the colossal conspiracy that took place that day. He even got away with it all. So when Season 6 came along and it was revealed that Mr. Bluetooth was really Graem Bauer, a weasly Smug Snake with family issues, it didn't please too many fans.

Walking Disaster Area: Whenever Jack is around, you can be sure that a bomb will go off, or deadly nerve gas will be released, or there'll be an attempt on the President's life, and the bodies will pile up. Kim eventually tells her father she cannot be around him any more, because whenever she is, people die.

Renee's thumb-chopping in Season 8 shows her to have become this. Even Jack is shocked.

Rob Weiss and General Bruckner commit treason against the U.S. by turning Omar Hassan over to the terrorists in order to get them to disable a bomb that will otherwise be detonated in New York.

President Taylor has become this, as her absolute determination to get the peace deal realized makes her cover up evidence of the Russians' role behind the day's events, and authorizing torture on Dana Walsh, even though she could simply write an immunity deal for her.

Aaaaaaaand it now comes full circle to Jack Bauer in season 8. He spent the final quarter of the season on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, resulting in the near-assassination of Russian President Suvarov. Fortunately, he came to his senses at Chloe's pleading, before instigating World War Three.

Western Terrorists: Stephen Saunders' organization appears to consist mostly of British people. At least, its leadership does.

Live Another Day has Londoners involved in its plot — appropriately, since it takes place in London.

What Happened to the Mouse?: Happened quite often, as characters would be introduced in semi-important roles only to vanish without explanation. After Season 4, this was often referred to as being "Behroozed".

The writers made a bad habit of this since season four. Behrooz's disappearance started the trend, but no example was as egregious as the President of the United States in season 4 after Air Force One got shot down in the middle of the season. His status was left up in the air, but since Charles Logan replaced him in season 5, he's either dead or incapacitated. Frustratingly enough, this happened again with season 6's POTUS Wayne Palmer after he unsafely gets pulled out of a coma, only to collapse hours later, and get replaced by VP Daniels. After season 6's brief subplot with the Logan clan, both Charles and Martha Logan's statuses were left in the air. Logan nearly died from getting stabbed, but returned in season 8 while Martha was alluded to have attempted or committed suicide, but her fate was still left hanging. It seems as if the writers prefer to leave characters out of commission without quite declaring them dead, so they can be brought back at anytime, but the ambiguity got irritating after a while.

And yet again with Simone Al-Harazi in Day 9.

What the Hell, Hero?: So many examples that it could just as well have its own page of them. Probably the greatest example comes in the series finale where Jack's Roaring Rampage of Revenge reaches the point of nearly starting WW 3 until Chloe successfully talks him down at the last minute.

Several of 24's story arcs are highly similar to the British series Spooks, which also aired throughout the 2000s. They include the counter-terrorism team being locked in their office because of a nerve gas threat, the hero teaming up with Alexander Siddig as a potentially-untrustworthy Muslim ally, a plot to crash airplanes together in midair, and a hacker breaking into the traffic light network to cause havoc and blackmail the government (before Live Free or Die Hard as well). There are more similarities, as well, but are just generic enough to be stock war on terror plots, like a season revolving around Iran's — or "Kamistan's" — nuclear program and a subsequent peace deal derailed by terrorism.

The first few episodes of Season 5, detailing a plot to bring Jack out of hiding by killing his friends, are very reminiscent of the intro to Commando.

Jack's entire character arc in the last third of Season 8 is remarkably similar to the one Willow Rosenberg has in the last few episodes of the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (coincidentally, writer David Fury was an executive producer on both shows and wrote episodes from both arcs). Similarities include them getting a fleeting moment of happiness with their love interest only for the love interest to be shot dead, going on a heartbroken Roaring Rampage of Revenge and brutally torturing and executing the murderer, and eventually winding up in a position to cause The End of the World as We Know It, only to be talked out of it and come back to their senses thanks to their best friend's intervention.

Working with the Ex: Happens quite a bit in 24. Tony and Michelle find themselves working together at CTU in the 4th season. Also, David Palmer ends up having to work with Sherry quite a bit, even asking for her help one time.

Lampshaded in Season 7; as a terrorist prepares to execute a port security guard that Jack and Tony had coerced into helping them earlier, Tony remarks to Jack that both of them knew the guard was dead the moment he got involved. Subverted, as Jack seems to decide that saving one man wasn't worth tipping off the terrorists that they were involved... then, just as the guard is about to be offed, Jack decides to take the shot anyways, and the guard becomes one of the very few innocents on 24 who survives being involved with terrorists.

World of Badass: Because even the tech geeks, Damsel Scrappys, and peace-seeking presidents of random Middle Eastern nations are capable of bringing the pwnage.

Would Hit a Girl: Done quite a bit, most notably with Bauer's interrogations of Nina Myers (who he rammed into the wall after grabbing her by the throat) and Dana Walsh (who he slapped around and bashed her head against the interrogation desk).

Up to Eleven when he gets a man to talk by shooting his innocent wife in the leg.

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